Constable Hamish Macbeth feels uneasy at the excitement and anticipation
engendered among Lochdubh residents by the announcement of a writing class
taught by visiting author John Heppel. The author soon proves a publicity hound
who will do anything to get on-air time. And at the class, this boastful and
insensitive writer callously shreds the eager villagers’ writing attempts
and mocks them in the process. Before long the village is up in arms against
this pretentious little upstart, and Macbeth’s worst fears are proved true
when Heppel is murdered.
It now falls upon Hamish to perform the disagreeable task of rooting out the
culprit from among his own friends and neighbors. The media descends upon
this sleepy hamlet and brings in its wake Macbeth’s nemesis, Blair, along
with a man-eating new superior, Heather Meikle, and Macbeth’s former
girlfriend Elspeth Grant, now a city newspaper reporter. As the body count
continues to rise, Macbeth has to overcome personal doubts and grave danger
in order to get to the truth.
No matter how laconic or low-tech, Beaton’s Hamish Macbeth series
consistently retains the reader’s interest through both the intricate
mystery at the heart of each story and the ongoing personal
travails of its central character, Constable Hamish Macbeth. Thanks to
myriad suspects and motives, this mystery is difficult to guess while
tension and danger increase with the page count. In addition to accurately capturing the
small-town atmosphere and its attendant gossip and closeness, in this
story Beaton also takes a mocking look at the behind-the-scenes goings-on
in a television studio. Macbeth’s personal love life continues on par at
its usual to-be-or-not-to-be pace and continues to keep the readers in
suspense in this aspect. All in all, a Hamish Macbeth mystery somehow always
feels cozy, inviting and perpetually interesting.