“I think I’ll never see Sonsie again and I think a damn murderer is still around, running free, and I am not going to get any help.”

The eccentric but effective policeman is the very heart of Beaton’s Scottish mystery series, with his changing cast of assistants and a string of broken romances, from the recent fiasco with a female officer, who turns vindictive when rejected, to his former fiancé, the titled Priscilla Halburton-Smyth--not to mention local journalist-turned-television-newscaster Elspeth Grant. The local ladies, elderly widows, and spinsters are always on the lookout for a suitable match, certain all Hamish needs is a wife to inspire and nurture his ambition. They cannot abide a man who lacks ambition, assuming it a serious flaw in Macbeth’s character.

The current mystery begins innocuously, with a request to investigate the sounds of ghosts emanating from Castle Drim on the most remote part of the island. With sufficient supplies for an overnight stay (the better to hear the ghosts), Hamish and his clumsy but good-natured constable, Charlie Carson, find no sign of ghosts. By happenstance, though, Charlie comes face to face with a dead body. When that yet-to-be-identified body goes missing, Hamish and Charlie begin to suspect that the “ghosts” are a cover for some possibly nefarious activity. Local smugglers do a brisk business this far from the city, ferrying cigarettes and drugs (the most popular and lucrative), supplying villages tucked away in the dense mountainous landscape.

The characters consist of the familiar and the new. Hamish’s nemesis, Detective Chief Inspector Blair, always does his best to sabotage Macbeth’s cases. The local ladies know everybody’s business. Macbeth also meets an unfamiliar batch of folk when he goes to Castle Drim to solve the murder--and adds a couple more while he’s there. There are any number of suspects: a seductive troublemaking wife, Olivia Sinclair, who loves to complicate her neighbors’ marriages; the retired Police Inspector, who has purchased Castle Drim with plans to remodel and sell the property; and local minister Peter Haggis, who resides with his sarcastic sister, Sheila. By the time the second murder occurs, that of Olivia Sinclair, Macbeth is determined to get to the bottom of this bizarre case.

Filled with Highland humor and colorful inhabitants, the Hamish Macbeth mysteries are uniquely satisfying, bristling with culture, satire and the complicated motives of savvy miscreants. Beaton portrays time and place with exquisite detail, her protagonist a man resisting the pressure of technology and the modernization of police work, following his instincts in case after case, nestled happily in a place he loves. I savor these small but delightful mysteries, a welcome break from the cacophony of reality, a short respite in the company of the irresistible Hamish Macbeth.