Long before Dr. Fingal Flahertie O'Reilly made most readers' acquaintance in Patrick Taylor's bestselling novel "An Irish Country Doctor, "he appeared in a series of humorous columns originally published in "Stitches: The Journal of Medical Humour." These warm and wryly amusing vignettes provide an early glimpse at the redoubtable Dr. O'Reilly as he tends to the colourful and eccentric residents of Ballybucklebo, a cozy Ulster village nestled in the bygone years of the early sixties.

Those seminal columns have been collected in "The Wily O'Reilly: Irish Country Stories." In this...