Liberalism’s Little Women

The Good Husband of Zebra Drive, by Alexander McCall Smith (Pantheon, 213 pp., $21.95)

THE novels of my childhood were rich in life lessons. In Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women, for example, adults and kids alike knew their duty, did the right thing, and were grateful for the blessings they enjoyed. Today’s popular “No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency” series-of which The Good Husband of Zebra Drive is the eighth installment-reflects, in a distinctly modern manner, the same ethos.