In Espresso Tales Alexander Mc Call Smith returns home to Edinburgh & the glorious cast of his own tales of the city the residents of 44 Scotland Street with a new set of challenges for each one of them. Bruce the intolerably vain & perpetually deluded ex-surveyor is about to embark on a new career as a wine merchant while his long-suffering flatmate Pat Mac Gregor set up by matchmaking Domenica Macdonald finds herself invited to a nudist picnic in Moray Place in the pursuit of true love. Prodigious six-year-old Bertie Pollock wants a boy's life of fishing & rugby not yoga & pink dungarees & he plots rebellion against his bossy crusading mother Irene & his psychotherapist Dr Fairbairn. But when Bertie's longed-for trip to Glasgow with his ineffectual father Stuart ends with Bertie taking money off legendary Glasgow hard man Lard O' Connor at cards it looks as though Bertie should have been more careful what he wished for. & all the time it appears that both Irene Pollock & Dr Fairbairn are engaged in a struggle with dark secrets & unconscious urges of their own.