Review: Death of a Liar by M.C. Beaton

death of a liar by mc beatonFormat read: ebook provided by the publisher via NetGalley
Formats available: hardcover, ebook, audiobook
Genre: mystery
Series: Hamish Macbeth #31
Length: 272 pages
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Date Released: February 3, 2015
Purchasing Info: Author’s Website, Publisher’s Website, Goodreads, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Book Depository

Sergeant Hamish Macbeth is alarmed to receive a report from a woman in the small village of Cronish in the Scottish Highlands. She has been brutally attacked and the criminal is on the loose. But upon further investigation, Hamish discovers that she was lying about the crime. So when the same woman calls him back about an intruder, he simply marvels at her compulsion to lie. This time, though, she is telling the truth. Her body is found in her home and Hamish must sort through all of her lies to solve the crime.

My Review:

The Hamish Macbeth series is still fun in small doses, but this one could have doubled as an episode of House, because everybody lies.

The story begins with a woman who claims to have been brutally attacked and raped, but there’s no evidence. She also doesn’t want Hamish to call in the local doctor, and we soon find out why – the woman not only has not been raped, she’s a virgin. There’s no evidence of any crime whatsoever, but there is a lot of evidence that the lady is a pathological liar. Because the call is in a relatively remote village, Hamish is not pleased by this waste of police time, especially when it is his.

While the desire is normally to believe the victim, in this case it is simply not possible. The doctor provides Hamish with a long list of lies that the supposed victim has told. She isn’t making stuff up to protect herself, she simply can’t stop herself from lying. She has mythomania.

So when she calls Hamish again to report a murder, he understandably doesn’t believe her. In this case, we have a woman who cried wolf. And just like the story of the boy who cried wolf, this woman is telling the truth, just this once. And she dies for it.

death of yesterday by mc beatonAs usual, nothing about this crime is exactly as it appears. Hamish starts out investigating a lonely death and finds himself poking into a religious cult that is fronting for both a long con and a drug running gang. He eventually gets to the right perpetrators, and most importantly finds the money, but it takes more than the usual number of red herrings, and proceeds nicely through the Macbeth series standard formula (see Wednesday’s review of Death of Yesterday for a description of that formula.)

While the journey in this series is always fun, the humor and in jokes are more fun if you’ve read some previous books in the series. But not too many.

death of a policeman by mc beatonEscape Rating C+: I read three of the Hamish Macbeth books in a row, after not having read one for several years. In addition to Death of Yesterday (see review) I also read Death of a Policeman (I got it from the library and did not review it).

I certainly enjoyed reading this series again. Hamish is an interesting character, and the townspeople of Lochdubh are by turns eccentric and charming, sometimes both at the same time.

Hamish is unusual in that he is a relatively young man who has come back to an area where the young people are mostly leaving. A fact that does not help his love life, which he constantly bemoans. He would like to settle down and get married, but his options in Lochdubh are simply limited.

At the same time, he is an unambitious man in an ambitious world. He doesn’t want a promotion, because any rank above Sergeant would take him out of Lochdubh and into the city of Strathsbane, which is a cesspit in general and Hamish just doesn’t want to live in a city. He likes his small cottage with his dog and his cat and the various livestock he keeps. He loves the pace of small-town life, and feels duty-bound to use his office to help the people of the county.

But he constantly bemoans his lack of romantic options, and continually reflects back on the two women he has been unsuccessfully engaged to. Unfortunately for him, they both return to his life just often enough to keep him from totally moving on. Thirty one books into the series, readers want some resolution to the poor man’s dilemma.

And speaking of Hamish’s dilemmas, he is an unconventional cop in a force that needs conformity and convention. Because he does the job, and does it well, he is able to hang onto it. But he drives his superiors bonkers. He’s not respectful, he doesn’t care about the status quo, and he doesn’t want a promotion or recognittion, so they don’t understand him or trust him.

Speaking of his superiors, one of the things that started to get to me was the Blair/Daviot dynamic. DCI Blair is Hamish’s immediate superior. The problem is that Blair is inferior in every way, and resents Hamish for showing him up at every turn. Human nature says that because Hamish lets Blair take the credit, Blair feels even more inferior and more angry about it.

The one thing Blair is good at is being properly deferential (read that as subservient) to Superintendent Daviot, his boss. Daviot knows that Blair is not merely useless, but an active detriment to solving crimes, but he keeps on defending him and letting him remain in his job in spite of his obstruction of justice and tampering with evidence. And his on the job drinking.

Daviot is equally culpable, for refusing to allow any investigations into his own friends and fellow club members, even when the evidence clearly points in their direction. The symbiotic and toxic relationship between Blair and Daviot has been going on a bit too long. I want someone to pay, and someone in a higher position to recognize that one of them (Blair) has to retire (or be hospitalized). Their behavior is negligent if not criminal, and it’s frustrating to see it continue in book after book without being addressed.

So three Hamish Macbeths in a row is probably my limit for a while. I hope the author introduces some changes to the formula in future books.

***FTC Disclaimer: Most books reviewed on this site have been provided free of charge by the publisher, author or publicist. Some books we have purchased with our own money or borrowed from a public library and will be noted as such. Any links to places to purchase books are provided as a convenience, and do not serve as an endorsement by this blog. All reviews are the true and honest opinion of the blogger reviewing the book. The method of acquiring the book does not have a bearing on the content of the review.

Review: Death of Yesterday by M.C. Beaton

death of yesterday by mc beatonFormat read: ebook provided by the publisher via NetGalley
Formats available: paperback, hardcover, ebook, audiobook
Genre: mystery
Series: Hamish Macbeth #29
Length: 272 pages
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Date Released: March 26, 2013
Purchasing Info: Author’s Website, Publisher’s Website, Goodreads, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Book Depository

Scottish Highland Sergeant Hamish Macbeth disbelieves summer student Morag – she lost memories of her pub night and sketchbook – until she turns up dead. As does witness, layabout Fergus. In Cnothan, “sour locals” take “pride in keeping themselves to themselves”, to keep their jobs at the Gilchrist dress factory. In past amorous attentions and police politics lie answers.

My Review:

death of a kingfisher by mc beatonIt’s been a while (see review of Death of a Kingfisher, here) since I read one of the Hamish Macbeth series, and I had forgotten how much fun they are. At least in small doses.

At the beginning of each story, someone dies. That someone is inevitably an outsider to Lochdubh or at least to Sutherland. This relatively unpopulated portion of the Scottish Highland couldn’t afford to lose as many locals as generally get killed off in the course of one of the books.

Also, most of the action in this one takes place in the nearby village of Cnothan, a place that Hamish has never liked and has never seemed welcoming to anyone at all. The villagers do an all too good job of “keeping themselves to themselves” in the face of outside intrusion. Which makes pretty much everyone we are introduced to in this story not terribly sympathetic, as well as generally obstructing a police investigation.

This story takes place during the depths of the Great Recession, not that the economy in this remote area is all that fantastic at the best of times. But the recession plays into the story, as the murder(s) that occur are all wrapped up in the one bright economic light in the rather dour Cnothan area. A clothing factory has opened nearby, courtesy of a government project to bring jobs to the Highlands. No one wants to say anything about anything that might put the future of their employer at risk.

And it definitely is at risk. The first murder victim is a totally unliked and unlikeable young woman named Morag Merrilea, and she is anything but merry. She claims to have been drugged while sketching at a local bar, and blacked out. She is such a bitch about the town and her job and all the people near her that Hamish decides she must have been drunk and simply refuses to admit it.

This isn’t one of his brighter moments. Everything that happens in the rest of the story hinges on Morag’s sketchbook, and exactly what she saw that she shouldn’t have. But Hamish is too busy, first mooning over the gorgeous sister of one of his suspects, and then avoiding her after he discovers that her beauty is even less than skin deep to figure out what is really going on.

Interference from both Detective Chief Superintendent Blair and his boss, Superintendent Peter Daviot, also causes this case to go through a lot more twists and turns than should be necessary to reach its conclusion. Blair, as always, does his level best (which sometimes isn’t very level) to get Hamish removed from the case if not the entire police force, and Daviot can’t imagine that any of his elite “friends” could possibly be involved in anything sinister.

Until Hamish proves that some of them very definitely are.

Escape Rating B: I have a soft spot in my heart for this series; it was one that I used to listen to on audio back in the days when I had long commutes. Mysteries are perfect for audio, it’s incredibly awkward to fast forward to the end, especially when you’re driving.

The town of Lochdubh and Hamish’s life lend themselves to a slow and leisurely reading (or listening) pace. Not much happens in Lochdubh, until suddenly there are bodies everywhere.

The stories do follow a kind of formula. First there’s a body. Then there’s a case that either nobody wants to investigate or that Blair takes away from Hamish because Hamish is way smarter than he is. In the end, Hamish lets Blair take the credit because he doesn’t want to be promoted away from Lochdubh.

There are generally a lot of red herrings. Both because Blair usually gets Hamish out of the way by sending him on a wild goose chase, and because Daviot refuses to allow an investigation into his friends and the members of his club, who often turn out to be at the bottom of something nasty.

Blair usually gets hospitalized for either his heart or his alcoholism, and Detective Inspector Jimmy Anderson is put temporarily in charge. Anderson lets Hamish get the job done until Blair is back on the scene and mucks up everything.

Hamish either gets involved with some woman he shouldn’t or one of his two previous loves reappears to mess him up again. Sometimes both. In this case, both.

This is a series where the journey is way more important than the destination. I generally enjoy this particular journey, the countryside is beautiful and at least some of the locals are friendly.

***FTC Disclaimer: Most books reviewed on this site have been provided free of charge by the publisher, author or publicist. Some books we have purchased with our own money or borrowed from a public library and will be noted as such. Any links to places to purchase books are provided as a convenience, and do not serve as an endorsement by this blog. All reviews are the true and honest opinion of the blogger reviewing the book. The method of acquiring the book does not have a bearing on the content of the review.

Death of a Kingfisher

I got hooked on M. C. Beaton’s Hamish Macbeth series back when I used to drive a lot. Notice I said hooked. Rather like a trout in Macbeth’s lovely Highland village of Lochdubh, I was caught, and now I can’t escape the net.

The latest entry in the series is Death of a Kingfisher. The Kingfisher in this instance is a beautiful bird, the showpiece of The Fairy Glen, a new tourist attraction at the nearby village of Braikie.

The locals weren’t to happy about The Fairy Glen, not at first, but it’s brought tourist traffic and tourist money to an economically depressed area of Sutherland, and the owner, Mary Leinster, has charmed the pants off of any opposition. In the case of her male opposition, possibly literally. She’s also played successfully on long-held superstitions. Mary doesn’t just claim to have the “second-sight”, her vision of a boy falling in the pond came true, and the boy nearly drowned.

But the death of the beautiful kingfisher was no accident: the bird, his mate and their chicks were poisoned.

The kingfisher is the first to die, but not the last. And the other deaths are human. First a wealthy and elderly woman dies when her motorized wheelchair lift practically skyrockets her up a staircase, and it is discovered that the seatbelt of the chair was tampered with. The woman may have been a cantankerous old baggage, but she didn’t deserve to fly through her own skylight. Then it’s discovered that she was robbed before she was killed.

After that, murders turn up all over the township, as anyone who hints at knowledge of the murder or the robbery is mysteriously eliminated before the police can question them.

And what about the police?

Hamish Macbeth is the local constable in Lochdubh. His tiny station covers most of the small towns and villages in the county of Sutherland in the Scottish Highlands, which is actually very far north.  Hamish wants to be sure he stays in Lochdubh, the place he loves, and does not get sent to the “big city” of Strathbane.

So Hamish usually makes sure that credit for solving the crime goes to someone else, so that he can remain just where he is. However, he continually worries that budget cuts may close all of the local stations, and there won’t be any place for him except Strathbane.

This crime has him stumped. The suspects always seem to have an alibi, and the alibi is usually CCTV. But there are two sets of crimes. The murders, and the robbery. Once Hamish realizes that there may be two sets of perpetrators, and that there are ways to fool CCTV, he’s well on his way to solving this mess, and getting back to his life.

Escape Rating B: Hamish is a likeable character, and this is a police procedural series although sometimes Hamish spends more time trying to figure out a way around the procedures than using them. But once he figures out which way the crime might have gone, it’s easy to get caught up in the chase.

One of the very interesting things about Hamish is that he has found the place he wants to be in life, and is doing everything he can to stay there. At the same time, he needs to make sure justice is done. So he lets others take the credit.

Something I discovered recently: BBC Scotland loosely based a TV series on the Hamish Macbeth series between 1995 and 1997. In the books, Hamish is described as very tall, thin and with bright red hair. The actor who portrayed Hamish in the series is Robert Carlyle, best known in the U.S. as Doctor Nicholas Rush in Stargate Universe, and Rumpelstiltskin/Mr. Gold in Once Upon a Time. Hamish is extremely likable. Rush and Gold are anything but. I keep wondering which one would be considered casting against type?