So when she turns up dead in a loch there’s no lack of suspects. In no time she has just about everyone wanting to kill her – or hoping that someone else does. Lady Jane Winters – the society widow of a Labour peer seems determined to upset all of the other students, she’s rude and aggressive and seems to know more about them all than she should. Of course he’s just a typical Highlander and as it turns out has plenty of native wit. Very quickly the character of Hamish Macbeth is portrayed as being very lazy and a bit of a scrounger, especially where coffee and food is concerned and he seems to be a bit lacking in brain power. They own The Lochdubh School of Casting: Salmon and Trout Fishing and are expecting a very mixed bunch of students – a 12 year old boy, a retired army major, an American couple, a London barrister, a London secretary, a debutante type and a society widow. The book begins with John and Heather Cartwright preparing for the arrival of their guests. I suspect that this will be a feature of all of the books.

This is quite similar to her Agatha Raisin books, but this time the murder mystery has to be solved by Hamish Macbeth who is the local Highland police constable, a bit of a lazy bones on the surface, but with the help of his many cousins who seem to live all over the world, he manages to find the culprit. Beaton, in memory of the author who died a few weeks ago, it’s the first book in her Hamish Macbeth series, published in 1995. I decided to read Death of a Gossip by M.C.

Death of a Gossip by M.C. Beaton