Dr. Finlay's Casebook: Omnibus

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The latter book is said to have inspired Anenurin Bevan to set up the National Health Service in 1948. Dr Finlay is a general physician beginning his practice in the fictional Scottish town of Levenford. We pay our respect to Elders past and present and extend that respect to all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples today. On the whole, there are some charming stories in this book that make it very readable - ideal for a light, entertaining read. Nevertheless, Cronin is an excellent storyteller and this set of connected short stories is an enjoyable, if rather light, read.

This volume contains two very different collections of Dr Finlay stories - and they don’t sit well together. The character Dr Finlay first appeared in Cronin's novella Country Doctor and in several subsequent short stories published in Hearst's International Combined with Cosmopolitan magazine from 1935 to 1939. My only complaint is that Cronin's obsessive defense of his own Catholicism tends, once more, to be tiresome, but possibly appropriate in the UK of his day. It was coarse, unbelievable, and involved the character assassination of all of the characters from the first book and a bunch of new ones besides. The wisdom of Dr Cameron in the background, and housekeeper, Janet, with her life long knowledge of the families he comes into contact with.Cronin has ensured that Dr Finlay is a character with whom most people can identify and this level of realism and the humour with which it is presented is what makes the book so readable. I can see how it very much worked for a weekly television serial but sadly, unlike the Citadel it doesn't seem to have stood the test of time as well. Cameron, the craggy senior partner, played by Andrew Cruickshank and Janet, their unflappable housekeeper and receptionist at Arden House, played by Barbara Mullen.

It’s worse in that book, but Dr Finlay is throughout a “self-insert Mary-Sue” who we are invited to admire to a ridiculous extent, while he behaves questionably.

Finlay character, the hero of a series of stories that served as the basis for the long-running BBC television and radio series entitled Dr.