Cord Jacket Required (From Oxford Mail)

Cord Jacket Required

2:52pm Tuesday 16th September 2008

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The breaking news over the weekend ‹ well it was for me anyway ‹ was that Alexander McCall Smith was embarking on a new serialised novel for The Telegraph, entitled Corduroy Mansions.

I'm a big fan of his five Scotland Street novels, which were first serialised in The Telegraph, so I will be following the developing story in Corduroy Mansions online, with thousands of other readers. The only downside to this is that McCall Smith has clearly put his Scotland Street adventures on hold. Will Bertie ever escape the psychotherapy treatment his mother insists on, and will artist Angus marry his true love Domenica? I need to know. Fortunately McCall Smith has promised to return to the Scotland Street characters at some point in the future, but this probably won't happen until his contract finishes with The Telegraph. In the paper, he tells his fans: "Earlier this year, I decided that I needed a break from that particular set of characters (Scotland Street), although I fully intend to return to the saga at some point in the future." Dickens and Tolstoy used to serialise their novels and now McCall Smith has the perfect platform for the genre by publishing the instalments online. McCall Smith has so many irons in the fire it is difficult to see how he will get time to write 1,000 words a day for Corduroy Mansions but if anyone can do it, he can. He probably knows more about Edinburgh than London, but I'm sure that won't matter - I've read the first instalment already and found it quite entertaining.

It might be pushing the boat out a bit to describe McCall Smith as the Dickens of the digital age, but only time will tell.