Recently the name of the late British author Dorothy Dunnett appeared on two of the lists where I hang out. I had never heard of her (and thought Dunnett a great pseudonym as in "the butler done it," but that is her real name) and choose her final book as my introduction. I selected it because it was about Johnson Johnson, a portrait painter, as was Dunnett, and because it was set in Morocco. I have never been there but I did live two years in another part of the Middle East.

I…