Friends, Lovers, Chocolate is the second of the Sunday Philosophy Club series of novels by Alexander McCall Smith, set in Edinburgh, Scotland, and featuring the protagonist Isabel Dalhousie.
Due to an inheritance from her late mother, she can work for a nominal fee as the editor of the Review of Applied Ethics.
Her closest friends are her niece Cat, a young woman who runs a delicatessen; her housekeeper Grace, who is outspoken and interested in spiritualism; Cat's ex-boyfriend Jamie, a bassoonist to whom Isabel has been secretly attracted ever since they met; and Brother Fox, an urban fox who lives in Isabel's garden.
Ian is worried that this man may have killed the original owner of the heart, and Isabel decides that they have a moral duty to try to find out more.
She asks her journalist friend Angus to speak to his contacts at the hospital, and he confirms that the young donor of Ian's heart was named Macloed.
Finally, Jamie apologizes for his behavior in the restaurant, and he and Isabel spend the evening in the usual way, playing music and drinking wine at her house.
"[3][4] A key subplot is Jamie's affair with Louise, which can be seen as demonstrating his willingness to enter into relationships with older women and foreshadowing the events of the next book in the series.
[6] The Times Online was more critical of the novel's perceived slower pace, calling it "sleuthing for softies" and commenting "[It was] entertaining, but I longed for more drama".
In particular, the opening chapter quotes from Burns’ inscription on the grave of another Scottish poet, Robert Fergusson, who is buried in the Kirk of the Canongate in Edinburgh: Freud was an Austrian psychoanalyst whose theories include that of the id, ego, and super-ego, which Isabel calls "scientifically shaky".
"[8] Lines from the Scottish Garioch's poem ‘At Robert Fergusson’s Grave’ are quoted along with Burns’ inscription (see above) in the opening chapter.
Sacks is a neurologist whose 1985 book The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat is mentioned by Isabel as the precursor to a number of works with similar titles.