SOURCE: Mangan, Gerald. “Where the North Wind Blows.” Times Literary Supplement, no. 4639 (28 February 1992): 25.

In the following review of Death of a Doctor, Mangan offers a mixed assessment.

Elspeth Davie's native Edinburgh has furnished much of the background of her fiction since her first novel, Providings (1965), and there seems to be a sense in which the divided personality of the city has shaped her imagination. In her last novel, Coming to Light (1989), it figured prominently enough to overshadow the less memorable characters; and in her fifth collection of stories, Death of a Doctor, it inspires a telling image for a conflict that preoccupies her in several other guises:

It was the combination of wild and formal in this city: these heavy thuds and batterings on a windy night, in contrast to the absolute calm within. … Who were the hosts and hostesses who could turn not a hair while birds...