New British fiction: Blue notes The Missing Shade of Blue: A Philosophical Adventure. By Jennie Erdal. Little, Brown; 309 pages; £12.99. JENNIE ERDAL is a British translator, the author of several non-fiction books and a memoir of her life as an editor and ghost writer. "The Missing Shade of Blue: A Philosophical Adventure," her first novel under her own name, is a wry, intelligent work. Reminiscent in mood and setting of the early fiction of Iris Murdoch, it follows clever people as they make a sad mess of their lives. It tells a story of adultery, madness and suicide, all of it conveyed in hindsight. The narrator is Edgar Logan, who has come to Edinburgh from Paris to translate the work of David Hume, a Scottish Enlightenment philosopher. While in Scotland, he becomes intrigued by the personality of a colleague, Harry Sanderson, a man in his early 60s and, at the end of his career, suffering and self-aware. At the centre of the novel is a high-definition portrait of Sanderson. His marriage to the much younger Carrie has degenerated into a series of suspicious and hostile exchanges. As seen through the eyes of Edgar, he is a wreck of a man with flaking skin and bloodshot eyes, swigging whisky and red wine in equal measure, and talking endlessly about failure. Suspended from his job after weeping in the lap of a prim American student, Sanderson is surprised by the sudden success of his hack academic book, "Happiness," which leads to television interviews in which he remains intransigently gloomy and belligerent. As well as being the narrator, Edgar has a role in the novel as a good listener and a friend. He is also a participating detective. He notes signs that his room has been disturbed while he is out, which leads him to do some night-time snooping on Sanderson and Carrie. As the narrative moves between past and present - between past tense and present tense and between recollected events and dramatised scenes - the spreading bleakness is lightened by enjoyable observations of Edinburgh and a background cast of students, university bureaucrats and overly cheerful television presenters. There are tense episodes, some dangerous, some absurd, as well as many ironic observations on the jargon of professionals and the language that conceals feelings. Sly jokes give ordinary events a philosophical twist. The novel is further lifted by moments of joy - fly fishing with Sanderson, collecting shells on the sea shore and the pleasures of art, literature and film. Quietly ambitious, it is a book that stays in the reader's mind.