After a romantic disappointment & an undeserved demotion Scots village bobby Hamish Macbeth decides a week's holiday at the coastal village of Skag might be just the ticket. He's dead wrong of course: the food is dire & the man in the next room nags his wife so loudly & continuously that more than one person at the Friendly House bed-&-breakfast wishes him dead though only Hamish is heard threatening him. When this chap's body is found floating in the river Skag Hamish is the prime suspect. While clearing his name the lanky Scot has to deal with the widow who's suddenly making eyes at a refined bachelor two leather-skirted Glaswegian beauties intent on raising disco hell & the rude revelation of one family man's secret life. Some holiday! Praise for M.C. Beaton: ' The detective novels of M. C. Beaton a master of outrageous black comedy have reached cult status'
- Anne Robinson The Times"."
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Hamish Macbeth is savouring the delights of a Highland summer but as fast as the rain rolls in from the loch his happy life goes to hell in a handbasket. The trouble begins when his beloved Priscilla Halburton-Smythe returns to Lochdubh with a new fiance on her arm. His miseries multiply when clouds of midges descend on the town. & then a paragon of housewife perfection named Trixie Thomas moves into Lochdubh with her cowed husband in tow. The newcomer quickly convinces the local ladies to embrace low-cholesterol meals ban alcohol & begin bird-watching. Soon the town's menfolk are up in arms & Macbeth must solve Lochdubh's newest crime
- the mysterious poisoning of the perfect wife.
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Stabbed & stuffed in a closet... When police constable Hamish Macbeth receives the news that there has been a murder at Arrat House home of the relentless practical joker Arthur Trent he doesnt race to the scene of the crime. After all last time he was called to investigate a death at the isolated Scottish manor the victim turned out to be Trents manservant covered in fake blood. Thus prepared for another prank Hamish arrives to find that Trent has been most decidedly murdered & for suspects there is a houseful of greedy relatives all of whom are more than interested in the contents of the will rather than the crime at h&. & when the Chief Inspector arrives on the scene & his former flame Priscilla Halburton-Smythe gets involved as well Hamish quite clearly has his hands full. ...

Stabbed & stuffed in a closet... When police constable Hamish Macbeth receives the news that there has been a murder at Arrat House home of the relentless practical joker Arthur Trent he doesn't race to the scene of the crime. After all last time he was called to investigate a death at the isolated Scottish manor the 'victim' turned out to be Trent's manservant covered in fake blood. Thus prepared for another prank Hamish arrives to find that Trent has been most decidedly murdered & for suspects there is a houseful of greedy relatives all of whom are more than interested in the contents of the will rather than the crime at h&. & when the Chief Inspector arrives on the scene & his former flame Priscilla Halburton-Smythe gets involved as well Hamish quite clearly has his hands full. ...

In the spring of 1948 Arthur Miller retreated to a log cabin in Connecticut with the first two lines of a new play already fixed in his mind. He emerged six weeks later with the final script of Death of a Salesman"
- a painful examination of American life & consumerism. Opening on Broadway the following year Miller's extraordinary masterpiece changed the course of modern theatre. In creating Willy Loman his destructively insecure anti-hero Miller himself defined his aim as being 'to set forth what happens when a man does not have a grip on the forces of life.'"
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Patricia Martyn-Broyd now in her seventies has retired to the Highlands. She hasnt written a word in years & her books are out of print. But now a television company is about to film her last detective story featuring the aristocratic Scottish detective Lady Harriet Vare. Even better a London publisher is bringing the book into print. Even though the snobbish Miss Martyn-Broyd doesnt care to mix with the locals she cant help but share her excitement with local policeman Hamish Macbeth. Imagine her horror when Miss Martyn-Broyd discovers that Lady Harriet Vare is portrayed as a pot-smoking hippy that the screenwriter is known for his violent & scurrilous scripts & that Lady Harriet is going to be played by the scene-stealing trollop Penelope Gates. But a contract is a contract Ms Martyn-Broyd quickly learns & when she is accused of murdering the scriptwriter & the leading lady she turns to her one friend in Lochdubh Hamish Macbeth to help her. ...

Murder in Paradise; when Jane Wetherby offers PC Hamish Macbeth a holiday at her Happy Wanderer health farm on the isle of Eileencraig he is more than happy to accept. Unfortunately the visit doesnt prove to be the pampering experience he had been hoping for. Windswept Eileencraig is inhabited by hostile islanders many of whom would be more than happy to be rid of the Happy Wanderer & its proprietor. & the company at the health farm is hardly better. The volatile party

Includes:: an ex-husband an illicit lover & Morag Todd an unadulterated snob who criticizes everybody & everything. So when Morag is found lying at the foot of a cliff with a broken neck no one seems too broken up about the event
- leaving it up to Hamish to solve the death of a snob.


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On 12 May 2009 Margaret Evison's son Lieutenant Mark Evison of 1st Battalion The Welsh Guards died of wounds sustained whilst leading a patrol in Helmand Province. Hailed a hero Mark's death was a national sacrifice his grave to be one of many in the identical ordered rows in a military cemetery. But to his mother Margaret it was the most intimate of griefs. In Death of a Soldier she attempts to reconcile her own unanswerable sense of loss with the idea that her son died for a good cause. With her we confront the horror of his death & witness her struggle to see epithets such as 'heroic' & 'noble' as more than a mask to hide that ugliness. Included in the book is Mark's diary kept while he was in Afghanistan & delivered to Margaret at home some weeks later. Widely"ed since its discovery it contains the thoughts of a sensitive young officer & serves as a poignant reminder of the terrible human cost of the war in Afghanistan. Death of a Soldier is an extraordinarily powerful tribute to Mark & a testament to Margaret's great love for him. It paints a portrait of Mark's short but accomplished life bringing his extraordinary character into relief & underlining the loss suffered by all who knew him. Whilst this is a book about the nature of grief it is also the story of a mother's struggle to understand how & why her son came to die & as such it touches on issues of public interest. As Margaret eloquently demonstrates that mixture of the personal & political is what uniquely characterises the death of a soldier. Articulate revealing & at times almost unbearably moving this is an important reflection on loss war & our responsibilites to those we send to fight. ...

Every night Hester Monk tends to women of the streets who have been injured as a result of their trade. But the injuries are becoming more serious & now a body has been discovered in one of the area's brothels. The dead man is the respected head of a successful railway company Nolan Baltimore. With calls for the police to clean up the streets Hester decides she must intervene to protect these women who stand to lose everything. Meanwhile her husband William Monk is investigating a possible fraud at Baltimore & Sons. As Monk endeavours to prevent a serious crime from taking place he faces some staggering revelations & finds that the time has come to confront his own demons
- even if it means losing all he holds dear...
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In the south of Scotland residents get their chimneys vacuum-cleaned. But in the isolated villages in the very north of Scotland the villagers rely on the services of the itinerant sweep Pete Ray & his old-fashioned brushes. Pete is always able to find work in the Scottish highlands until one day when Police Constable Hamish Macbeth notices blood dripping onto the floor of a villager's fireplace & a dead body stuffed inside the chimney. The entire town of Lochdubh is certain Pete is the culprit but Hamish doesn't believe that the affable chimney sweep is capable of committing murder. Then Pete's body is found on the Scottish moors & the mystery deepens. Once again it's up to Hamish to discover who's responsible for the dirty deed
- & this time the murderer may be closer than he realizes. Praise for the Hamish Macbeth" series: " The much-loved " Hamish Macbeth" series beguiling blend of wry humour & sharp observations about rural life." (" Good Book Guide"). " It's always a special treat to return to Lochdubh". (" New York Times Book Review"). " The detective novels of M C Beaton a master of outrageous black comedy have reached cult status." (Anne Robinson " The Times")."
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