Death of a Gossip (A Hamish Macbeth Mystery)

Hamish MacBeth's cases in the Highlands of Scotland are interesting and unique due to the foibles of the people. His intuition and deductive skills get him to the crime's solution every time. The setting and the people enhance the story and make you want to immediately reserve a room at a Lochdubh hotel.

EASY entertaining Scottish MYSTERY. LOVELY SCENERY AND AMUSING EASY GOING MAIN CHARACTER. KEPT THE READER'S attention with interesting characters and personal insights into the personal lives of all involved.

The mystery was fairly engaging but it was very hard to feel the sense of respect and affection you want to feel for the main character as his main (only?) quality seemed to be his equanimity. He is also lazy, disrespectful, and has no qualms about breaking the law himself and helping himself to a free...whatever he can get his hands on! There are several fairly graphic descriptions of sexual activity making these unsuitable for the non-voyeuristic crowd.

Review Originally Posted At: www.FictionForesight.com

At a small hotel in the Highlands, there is a fishing school currently hosting an odd bunch of hopeful salmon fishers, who all have one thing in common; they hate Lady Jane. A cantankerous woman, Lady Jane knows disturbing facts about their past and loves to torment each person with the one secret they have tried to hide. The entire group is relieved when she disappears one morning, until they find her dead body in a pool. Knowing that it must be a member of the fishing party who committed the crime, local bobby Hamish Macbeth tries to solve the case.

Frankly, I am disappointed. M.C. Beaton has tons of books and while I love cozy mysteries, and her Agatha Raisin series, I had to drag myself through this book.

The biggest issue I have is with the layout. The book is being told through the various guest viewpoints, with a special emphasis on the vapid Jane. She is a lovestruck eighteen year old who wants to be a big girl, and she doesn't change an ounce through the book. I liked that we switched to different characters, but seeing the connections in stories is rough. Beaton jumps all over the place in the plot, and she barely makes the murder the focus. Half of the book is over before Lady Jane dies, even though we know she is the one who will die from early on. I kept waiting for it to happen so we could move on from the tragic love triangle of Jane, Jeremy, and Daphne.

Hamish Macbeth was in this book, but he didn't feel like the protagonist at all. At first, he was just a weird loafer who showed up to mooch food from the couple who run the fishing school. It wasn't until the very end that he really become a focus. This is too bad, because he actually was a good, smart character. He does his investigating thoroughly, albeit a little unorthodox and lazy at times. I thought his relationship with the rich woman was cute. Beaton just couldn't lace the school and Hamish together in a well designed way.

The characters acted like it was the 1700s at times, and at others it was more modern thinking. I am still not sure in what time period these books take place. The dialogue seems stale and the reactions are stiff and not very believable. It is evident that these must be her earlier books or that she was attempting to emulate Agatha Christie, but failed in both her structuring and narrative skills.

The mystery itself was well-played. The clues are rather easy to follow, as Hamish must outline them to several people and attempt to coerce them to tell him important parts of their involvement by playing dumb. It is as if the man is a secret genius. This only makes me more upset that he is barely in the book and hopeful that any later ones would use him more. Although his Highlander accent makes the dialogue difficult to read at times.

I wouldn't recommend this to anyone who wants a juicy mystery. This is more for someone looking for fluffy, silly romances with some mystery on the fringes.

(www.FictionForesight.com)

A cozy mystery set in the Highlands of Scotland, what a treat. M C Beaton introduces her red haired, lazy local policeman, Hamish MacBeth. A husband and wife team operate a fishing school in the Highlands, but this year the catch proves hard to swallow as one of the guests is murdered. I adore Hamish and his easy going approach to life. Each of the guests hides a secret, but one of the guests uncovers everyone secret. Interwoven in the murder mystery, M C Beaton throws lessons in fly fishing. The characters present the gamut of the social scale with the rich, unmarried lady, the poor, working woman, the social climbing American couple, the young boy needing a father, and the undistinguished major. Even Hamish presents quirks such as his love for Priscilla, the unattainable flower.

Deep in the Scottish Highlands is a quaint little village called Lochdubh. Now that fishing season has opened, there are new recruits to the fishing school run by John and Heather Cartwright. When one of their students turns up murdered, the mystery falls to Constable Macbeth to solve. Is one backwoods constable equipped to solve a murder?

I find it highly amusing that, from the very beginning you know exactly who is going to get murdered. Why? Because she was the most annoying character I’ve ever encountered and I very well may have stopped reading if she’d survived. Lady Jane Winters, a nasty gossip columnist, doesn’t seem to have a decent bone in her body, letting everyone’s secrets slip in the most public of ways. I’m actually rather surprised that it took someone as long as it did to kill her. She made no friends during her visit to the fishing school.

Hamish Macbeth is hands down the best thing about this entire story. He’s quirky, he’s funny, and he absolutely aggravates every last person in Lochdubh. Even better is that he doesn’t care. He simply carries on with his day and mooches as many cups of coffee and free meals as he can. The tactics he employs are outlandish and suspect, but in the end, he gets the job done, all while aggravating Chief Inspector Blair, sent down from the larger city of Strathbane.

Cozy mysteries are quickly becoming a favorite go-to on my bookshelf. Death of a Gossip wasn’t the most gripping mystery, but it certainly was the funniest. I don’t know about you, but there is definitely a place for a laugh-out-loud mystery in my life. Jam packed with odd and sometimes annoying characters, Death of a Gossip is a quick and easy read that will bring you more than a taste of mystery.

originally posted at long and short reviews

Beaton didn't begin writing (or at least publishing) until she was into her forties, but in the thirty-five years since then she has produced almost forty novels in numerous series and under several pseudonyms. (When does she sleep?) They're mostly mystery novels of the "cozy" variety, and romances, and light historical fiction. Granted, this isn't high literature, but she's a well-regarded craftsman with a large following. While I was well aware of her existence, I hadn't actually read any of her work, so I took my wife's advice (she's a fan) and picked up the first in her long-running "Constable Hamish Macbeth" series. And it's not bad.

Hamish is a native Highlander in the northwest corner of Scotland, managing a living as a village constable (dealing with drunks, fist-fights, and poaching is his principal job), and making ends meet by keeping chickens behind the police station and by doing a little poaching himself. He's a talented scrounger, always showing up when the coffee is being poured and there are sandwiches on offer, but he's generally well enough liked. He tries to keep the place on an even keel without having to arrest people, usually, and (like most Highland Scots) he has relatives all over the world, which provides a useful information network. And, since he likes where he is, he's not interested in promotiion.

The story in this first outing involves an English couple, both avid anglers, who run a trout and salmon fishing school in the village, catering to moneyed fishing-tourists from all over the country. The current newly arrived class includes an assortment of types: The retired army major, the American couple, the young London solicitor with a sense of entitlement, the Oxford debutante on the make, and an eleven-year-old boy. And one other -- a loud, abrasive society widow who insults everyone and who, we will discover, has her own secret. But that's after she's been found, drowned in a trout stream. And since everyone in the class has quickly come to loathe her, there's no shortage of suspects.

The case is taken over by DCI Blair, head of the local CID, since Macbeth is hardly qualified to head up a murder investigation, but he takes pleasure in putting the constable down, threatening to make his life hell (just because he can), and jumping to all the wrong conclusions in the investigation besides. Good thing Hamish is so publically even-tempered as he decides to solve the case on his own, just to get back at Blair. The story's not bad and the plot is believable, but I have one complaint: It all ends too abruptly. Suddenly, Hamish is revealing whodunit, when I had expected at least another few chapters of his own investigations behind Blair's back. I assume the author reached her scheduled maximum length and had to wrap things up in a hurry.

The story involves a mixed group of people attending a weeklong fishing class at the Lochdubh Hotel. It turns out that all have a skeleton in their closets, and one of the group is an undercover gossip columnist who makes her living destroying the lives of others. The others consider her a rude, evil person and each has a motive for murder. Unfortunately, the murder happens offstage, so there is little drama in the plot. Having finally read Beaton’s “pilot” mystery after 25 of the ensuing titles, I would never have expected this series to become what it is today. Hamish eventually solves his first murder - using intuition, not clues. We meet none of the loopy Lochdubh characters. Priscilla Halburton-Smythe plays a minor part, and Angus MacGregor is mentioned but does not appear. Inspector Blair is here being his usual nasty self, but without the menace that occurs later in the series. Not essential reading except for series devotees.

John and Heather Cartwright operate the Lochdubh School of Casting, where they teach tourists how to fly fish salmon. They love fishing and love teaching people to fish, however there is something decidedly fishing about this group of students. One lady in particular, Lady Jane, seems to be stirring up trouble and animosity between the students with her mean, rude behaviour. When Lady Jane turns up dead, at the end of the one of the teacher's fishing lines, it seems like any number of people could have killed Lady Jane and it's up to local constable, Hamish Macbeth, to figure out who did it.

I'm a huge fan of M.C. Beaton's other series, Agatha Raisin Mysteries, and for quite some time readers have suggested I try this series about village constable Hamish Macbeth. I was previously acquainted with this series by the tv show (Hamish Macbeth) which aired from 1995-1997. As a teen I absolutely adored Robert Carlyle's portrayal of Hamish Macbeth and I wasn't sure how the book series would compare. As is usual to the case, the first book in this series is as good as the tv show, if not better!

Death of a Gossip was quite short (at just 149 pages) but it sure packs a great mystery. The reader learns a little about Lochdubh, a lot about Hamish Macbeth, including his family background, and his crush on Priscilla Halburton-Smythe. We also learn the kind of person that Lady Jane is, and why almost everyone in the fishing class could have wanted to kill her.

I didn't end up guessing the murderer and I had a great visit with my first book in the Hamish Macbeth Mysteries. I intend to visit again with the second book in the series, Death of a Cad. I'm hoping for more about the charming and eccentric locals in Lochdubh and of course more Hamish Macbeth!

The first book in the Hamish Macbeth series is, oddly enough, not really focused on Constable Macbeth. Yes, Macbeth solves the crime, but this book spends more time on the lives and antics of the other characters. Particularly, it focuses on Alice Wilson, a young and rather pathetic woman who has taken a fishing holiday in Lochdubh in hopes of impressing her middle-aged boss. The fishing school is well-known and respected, but it has never seen the likes of Lady Jane Winters, a professional battle axe who delights in making others miserable. When she turns up dead everyone is more or less pleased.

This marks Hamish's first interaction with Inspector Blair. We get to see the genesis of their mutual hatred. We also get to see the beginnings of Hamish's relationship with Priscilla Halburton-Smythe. Those who have read later books in the series will note that the main characters have definitely developed since the first installment.