Book info

• Title Death of a Gossip
• Author M. C. Beaton
• Year 1985
• Genre Mystery

When society widow and gossip columnist Lady Jane Winters joins the local fishing class she wastes no time in ruffling the feathers - or should that be fins? - of those around her. Among the victims of her sharp tongue is Lochdubh constable Hamish Macbeth, yet not even Hamish thinks someone would seriously want to silence Lady Jane's shrill voice permanently - until her strangled body is fished out of the river. Now with the help of the lovely Priscilla Halburton-Smythe, Hamish must steer a course through the choppy waters of the tattler's life to find a murderer. But with a school of suspects who aren't willing to talk, and the dead woman telling no tales, Hamish may well be in over his head for he knows that secrets are dangerous, knowledge is power, and killers when cornered usually do strike again.

Thoughts

This was an odd one for me to read, because I haven’t ever seen Hamish Macbeth before and only really knew it was about a Scottish detective. The story didn’t grab me to start with, particularly with all the foreshadowing. It felt like a nice, sedate murder mystery rather than the high tech crime thrillers nowadays. But that did mean a slow pace. Setting up the murder victim as being nasty to everyone so there were motives left, right and centre was a bit tedious but it paid off in the end.

I stuck with it through curiosity more than anything, and I did gradually start to enjoy it. Hamish himself is an odd central character as he’s actually off on the sidelines for much of it, and not particularly well liked by anyone involved. He does do the classic crime novel thing of investigating when he’s told not to though, so it doesn’t stray too far from the norm.

Good, if not top of my list of murder mysteries. I’ll probably see what the next one is like, so it certainly sparked my interest in Macbeth and his adventures.

Rating: 3 / 5