Good book, weak detective story: M. C. Beaton: DEATH OF A GOSSIP
Oct 03 '08
The Bottom Line For how Scotsmen see themselves and the English, read this book. Also for Highlands atmosphere, nature, humor, characterization and good writing. As a puzzle to be unraveled: it's not much.
"NOT IN THE DATA BASE" is the fact I about DEATH OF A GOSSIP which I had to work around for this epinions review. Curious.
While not as prolific as, say, Erle Stanley Gardner, English authoress Marion Chesney (Marion McChesney) really cranks out the books, using nearly a dozen pseudonyms, including M. C. Beaton. In detective tales/mystery stories M. C. Beaton has produced both 18 volumes of Agatha Raisin and 24 titles in the Hamish Macbeth series. Hamish Macbeth was televised by the BBC and remains popular both in the USA and Britain.
So why does the epinions data base not contain DEATH OF A GOSSIP: A HAMISH MACBETH MURDER MYSTERY? I haven't a clue (pardon the pun).
DEATH OF A GOSSIP started the Hamish Macbeth adventures in 1985. Hamish is a lanky, ungainly thirty-something constable of the fictional town of Lochdubh (Black Loch), a fishing village on the northwestern side of Scotland. In the county of Sutherland, it is not directly on the sea, but is scattered along a salt loch with great salmon and trout streams cascading down from the nearby mountains.
Hamish Macbeth is not as plodding as he makes out to be. He has turned down offers of promotion within the Scottish police hierarchy to stay where he is in an undemanding, crime lite locale. Why? Well, Hamish Macbeth is the eldest of lots of much younger siblings. By tradition he may not marry until at least the second oldest is on his own feet and able to relieve him of the burden of family care.
The relaxed, libertarian ethos in and around Lochdubh allows Hamish to save money legitimately earned (and otherwise) to send back to his ancestral nest to help with the chicks. He is not above a bit of poaching, confiscating other men's illegal takes to sell for cash and mooching, mooching, mooching cups of coffee and tea and free snacks wherever he can. Call Hamish Macbeth a sort of family-focused Robin Hood.
Hamish moons for a much younger woman who has grown up thinking of him as a sort of noble chum or older brother but nothing more -- Priscilla Halburton-Smythe, daughter of the richest man in twenty miles. She will reappear in later volumes.
"The Gossip" in DEATH OF A GOSSIP is introduced as "Lady Jane Winters: Society Widow." She is no lady, but a vicious, syndicated gossip columnist who loves to infiltrate ad hoc, briefly gathered interest groups with one or more prominent people and then roast them in later columns. In this novel, The Gossip a few months ago selected a group of nine other people (two of whom dropped out by novel's beginning) to deal her pseudonymous self into. She used the intervening time to dig up dirt on every last one of them, including a young boy.
They have come for a few days training in fly-fishing to the Lochdubh School of Casting, owned and run by John and Heather Cartwright. The Gossip tells each of these participants dark personal deeds that they thought were deeply buried secrets. She makes every one of these people angry enough to kill her. And one of them does.
Higher police authorities then shove man-on-the-spot Hamish Macbeth aside. But, predictably, he solves the murder.
I would give this book only TWO STARS as a detective story. Why? Clues are too few to permit the reader to feel that she could solve the puzzle on her own. Macbeth runs down the murderer drawing on two strengths:
--(1) a vast network of kinsmen (including fourth cousins) who are journalists, residents of foreign parts, etc. whom he phones on other people's instruments at great cost (though not to himself) for background information on suspects;
==(2) an uncanny ability to jump to correct, inexplicable conclusions based on inferences from very few facts. Two stars, as I said, as a detective mystery.
But DEATH OF A GOSSIP is a darn good read in all other respects: I give it FOUR STARS for non-detective components. Northwest Scotland comes alive in all it gorgeous nature, flora, fauna and eccentric characters. The writing style is simple, colorful, crisp, straight from the shoulder and with an undemanding vocabulary, "the sunshine was bleaching away the worries of the night" (DAY FOUR, p. 89 in my 2008 U.K. Constable and Robinson edition). So overall: I give it THREE STARS. Read it for reasons other than how to solve a murder.
This is a perfect little "cozy" book for passing idle moments on a train, bus, Scottish ferry or transatlantic flight (as I did on all four a few days ago) . DEATH OF A GOSSIP brings a tiny part of today's Scotland to life. It unpeels a bunch of ordinary characters (except for the really vicious Gossip) with more good than bad in each. And, oh by the way, the novel provides not a few tips on the art of angling and fly fishing. -OOO-
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Member: Patrick Killough
Location: Black Mountain,North Carolina, USA
Reviews written: 136
Trusted by: 57 members
About Me:
Husband for 45 years. Father. Grandfather. Catholic. Rotarian. Retired US Senior Foreign Service Officer. Hibernian.
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