Death of a Gossip (Hamish Macbeth Mystery, #1)

by M.C. Beaton

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.

• ISBN10: 0312186371
• ISBN13: 9780312186371
• Publish Date: 1 January 1985
• Publish Status: Out of Print
• Out of Print: 9 February 2021
• Publish Country: US
• Imprint: St Martin's Press
• Format: Hardcover
• Pages: 166
• Language: English

Reviews

[Mystereity Reviews]

More like 2.5 stars. Not bad, but moved too slow and the plot wasn't enough to fuel the story and and the characters were nothing more than faintly interesting filler. I liked Hamish MacBeth though, he's an interesting enough character that the story wasn't a complete wash.

[elvinagb]

It was interesting to go back and read the first Hamish Macbeth novel by M. C. Beaton. You get a look at Hamish and his early relationship with Priscilla and can already see how it will always be complicated by their jobs, families and the class differences. You also see just how people view Hamish and his acceptance of his job as a lowly constable in a small village, how they don't understand that he doesn't want a promotion to work in a big city and enjoys his life. Hamish's skirmishes with Blair and where that goes in future books is beginning to play out. Their hatred and distrust of each other begins as one member of a fishing party is murdered and the case is handed to Blair and his team from Strathbane.
Like Beaton's Agatha Raisin novels, the deep undercurrents of small village life are exposed by crimes committed from within and by visitors to the idyllic surroundings. Against a backdrop of fly fishing, a gossip columnist from a big London newspaper gathers information on the potential scandalous behaviour of other guests and manages to make everyone of them wish her dead. When she is found dead at the bottom of a pool of water, the police have many suspects and very little in the way of clues to follow. By using his resources and relatives spread out in Scotland, England and New York, Hamish must find a way to expose the murder but keep himself in the background and not make his superiors promote him away from his home.

[MurderByDeath]

I thought this book was just ok, really. I was impatient with the POV of Alice - who I thought was TSTL. I would have like the story more if more time was spent from the POV of Hamish as I found him to be a likeable and intriguing character. Don't know that I'll read any more.