After writing about heavy political issues recently, I am taking a break. This week’s book is a bit of a trifle. Hamish Macbeth is a red-haired clever police sergeant who keeps the peace in the Scottish Highland village of Lochdubh. He is tall and thin and sometimes appears to be a bit bumbling, but he has a sharp mind that figures out who did it when someone is murdered. He is the central character in the thirty or so books in the series.
The story begins as the village is trying to become more environmentally responsive. Mrs. Freda Fleming is a member of the district council who worked her way into being appointed Chief Officer for the Environment. She is a wealthy, overbearing widow who seduced the head of the council so that he would give her the job. Mrs. Fleming wants to use her position to get noticed in the media. She's sure that a job on Scottish television is in her future. She knows little about the village, but she is determined to aggressively “green” Lochdubh.
Mrs. Fleming wants to change the trash collection schedule so she asks Hamish who does that. He sends her off to see Fergus Macleod, the local dustman, as they are known. Hamish isn’t impressed with her haughty air but there are lots of eccentric people in the area. His new assistant, Clarry Graham, drinks a lot and is not helpful in police matters but he’s a good cook. Hamish can always rely on his big, slobbering dog, Lugs, who is a good buddy.
Fergus is married to Martha, who is worn down by having four small children and a husband who drinks too much and beats her. He was a successful accountant in his younger days but something happened so now he is a dustman.
Mrs. Fleming meets with Fergus. She wants the people to recycle what they can with new bins she will provide. She also will get Fergus a new truck that will automate his work so that he can handle his new assignment. She also promoted him to be the Environmental Officer with double the salary and a new uniform.
Hamish has heard that Fergus beats his wife so Clarry is sent off to check on Martha. Fergus is out drinking to celebrate his promotion. Martha is overwhelmed and confused when the talk touches on her husband’s hurting her, so Clarry makes a great lunch for everyone.
At a town meeting, Chief Environmental Officer Fleming announces the Great Greening of Lochdubh and introduces Environmental Officer Fergus in his new uniform. The residents know all about Fergus’s flaky behavior and shady past so they start to laugh. He is not happy.The next day Hamish goes to check on the construction of a new hotel that will be competition for the classic one that’s been serving the area for decades. The hotel is owned by the family of Priscilla Halburton-Smythe, who is Hamish’s sometimes love interest. She is worried about losing staff and business.
Fergus gets even with the people who laughed at him by not taking their trash and recycling. He makes up bogus reasons why he can’t take the rubbish. Many people are against change anyway, and Fergus’ behavior does not help build him good will. Many villagers write letters of complaint to Chief Environmental Officer Fleming which she ignores. She assumes that the people are crazy and are all wrong in their criticism of Fergus.
Clarry goes to talk to Fergus about picking up all of the trash. That doesn’t go well but Clarry does get to see Mrs. Macleod again so he is happy. A bit later he sees her in the village with a fresh black eye that her husband gave her.
That night, Hamish enjoys the Beef Wellington that Clarry, an excellent cook, made.
The next day, people report that Fergus didn’t pick up any of the trash/recycled materials. Hamish and Clarry scour the village. Clarry goes to the site of the new hotel and asks the owner, Mr. Ionides, if he or any of his workers have seen the dustman. They haven’t. Clarry goes over to the Macleod house to check with Martha, who hasn't seen her husband since yesterday.
Nessie and Jessie Currie - the Currie sisters - are stalwart characters in these books. They are spinsters who are local gossips who know everything that happens in the area. They also appear to have some clairvoyant powers, not unusual in the Scottish Highlands. Jessie smells something awful in the recycle bin. It turns out to be Fergus. He has been permanently recycled.
Chief Inspector Blair, Hamish’s boss and his nemesis, shows up to check out the crime scene.Blair has heard that Clarry, upset at Fergus’s continuing abuse of his wife, had threatened the dustman. Hamish points out that half of the village had threatened Macleod. Blair is not sympathetic to Clarry’s revealing that Fergus was a serial domestic abuser. “Perhaps she deserved it,” observes the sensitive Chief Inspector.
Hamish has a friend, Callum McSweeney, who just lost his job. Hamish asks Callum if he wants Fergus’s old job. The offer is accepted as long as the new environment officer does not have to wear the hideous green uniform that Macleod wore. Hamish works things out with Mrs. Fleming who wants no interruption in her greening efforts. In his job interview, Callum praises Chief Environmental Officer Fleming’s concern for the environment and he is hired.
Hamish interviews Martha, the new widow. She is upset that her husband is dead but she won’t miss the beatings. She says that Fergus received a phone call the night before he disappeared. He was very excited about it and said that his financial problems would soon be over. She had no idea who had called. Fergus put on a tie and went out to meet somebody.
Hamish starts his investigation by talking to people who knew Fergus. Archie, the village drunk, tells Hamish that he saw Fergus with Josie Darling, a young woman who was engaged to a man from a neighboring village. She denies knowing Fergus but Macbeth senses that she is lying. He’s off to talk to her mother who also lies about not knowing the deceased dustman.
Hamish is on to talk to the Currie Sisters who saw Josie with Fergus the night before he went missing.
Clarry offers to feed everyone at the local Italian restaurant. He knows the owner, Mr. Ferrari. While everyone else eats, Clarry tours the kitchen and exchanges recipes with Mr. Ferrari and his chef. Maybe being a policeman isn’t the best use of Clarry’s talent and interests.
Hamish meets with fellow law enforcement officer Jimmy Anderson from the next village. He is technically Hamish’s boss, but they have a good relationship. Jimmy Anderson is very fond of Johnny Walker whisky so Hamish offers him a drop or two. Jimmy says that Fergus had been dead for two days before the Currie sisters smelled him. Jimmy and Hamish believe that Fergus’s was killed elsewhere, that his body was moved to the Currie house, and that the task would have taken two people to accomplish.
Hamish and the other officers continue to interview the villagers but get no new information. Macbeth goes to the Currie house and examines the grounds near where Fergus's body was dumped. He finds a pink thread which may be important.
Angela, the minister’s wife, goes to help Martha sort out her late husband’s clothes and such. She finds a cache of hidden letters that she brings to Hamish. The letters all are evidence that Fergus was blackmailing people, including Josie whose fiancé dumped her before the wedding. She was embarrassed so she gave Fergus money to not tell anyone. The other blackmail cases were more serious. When confronted by Hamish, Josie admits that she paid Fergus to keep quiet and then she tries to seduce the cop. No go. He is disgusted.
The letters lead Macbeth to visit other people who were being blackmailed by the dustman who found his victims by reading their letters about embarrassing situations that they had thrown out in the trash. Some of his targets were having illicit affairs. Others had businesses that were in financial trouble. All of them paid money to ensure that Fergus Macleod kept quiet about their foibles. Each of his victims had a motive for murder.
Hamish notices that an attractive woman was at the local school. He knows that the village just hired a new teacher. Hamish does some investigating and finds out that the new teacher, who is divorced, is Moira Cartwright. He calls her up and welcomes her to town by inviting her to dinner.
Much to Hamish’s surprise and annoyance, the attractive young lady he saw at the school was not the new teacher. She was the niece of the new teacher and was helping her aunt settle in. The teacher, Moira is an older, gruff, large woman. It turns out that Moira’s husband turned out to be a murderer, a good reason to leave him. They do have a nice dinner as Hamish fills her in on the village. He figures that it’s always good to have a friend at the school to help him with investigations.
Hamish learns that after the divorce and a move to a new place, she was being blackmailed. If she didn’t pay up, the blackmailer would tell everyone in her new village that she had been married to a murderer. She went to the police who set up a fake money drop. No one turned up to take the money and that ended the blackmail attempts.
Hamish noted that fifteen years ago, when this blackmail happened, Fergus lived in Dingwall, the same village as Moira. He was an accountant then. Since he was a blackmailer in Lochdubh now, he might have been practicing that trade in Dingwall back then.
Hamish visits Fergus’s old accounting firm in Dingwall. He makes friends with the administrative assistant who worked there when Fergus did. It turns out that the firm had to fire Macleod. He started off well there, but his drinking became a major problem and he was stealing small amounts of money for his own use.
One of the partners, Mr. Leek, returns from lunch and talks to Hamish who asks him if Fergus was involved in any blackmail activities. It turns out that he was. Fergus had an affair with Annie Robinson, the wife of a major client. She broke it off quickly, but Fergus threatened to tell her husband unless she paid up. She decided to tell her husband herself and hope for the best. It didn't work. He divorced her and gave her no money in the settlement. When Hamish met her, she was living in a run-down flat. She confirmed that Fergus had been a bad person when she knew him. The years had not changed him.
As soon as Hamish gets back to the police station, he gets a call from villager Kirsty Ettrik who screams that her husband is dead. Hamish confirms that indeed Angus Ettrik had been murdered with a massive blow to his head.
Hamish talks to the neighbors of the deceased. Elspeth MacRae didn’t have much information, but she did say that an old vagabond, Sean Fitz, was back in the area. Since he wandered around, he might have seen something.
Hamish tracks him down. Sean assumes that he’s about to be arrested for something but all Hamish wants is information. Sean had talked to Angus the day before the murder and found out that Angus was in financial trouble. The day before Fergus went missing Sean also saw him on the river arguing with Colonel Halburton-Smythe, the owner of the hotel in Lochdubh.
Hamish goes to the Tommal Castle Hotel and asks Priscilla, the Colonel’s daughter, to set up a meeting. The Colonel tells Hamish that Fergus was poaching fish on the river and they had an argument. Hamish sees that he’s not getting the entire truth. For one thing, Fergus hated fishing and hunting. He would not go near a fish.
After Jimmy pours a whisky, Hamish reports to him about Fergus’s possible blackmail scheme years before in Dingwall. They still have no idea who killed Fergus or anyone else recently deceased in the village. The one new thing in the area is the new hotel under construction by the Greek millionaire. Perhaps Fergus was trying to blackmail him. They will check it out. Hamish is feeling guilty about not sharing all that he knows about Fergus’s various blackmail efforts with Jimmy, but Hamish wants to keep as much as he can under wraps to avoid embarrassing people. If he solves the crime in a day or two, nothing has to go public.
Hamish visits Josie Darling, the young lady that Fergus was blackmailing about the fact that her fiancé called off their wedding that Josie had been bragging about for months. With Fergus gone, she doesn’t have to worry about blackmail. She tells Hamish that the last time she saw Fergus he was very happy and didn’t pressure her for the blackmail money. Fergus told Josie that he was about to come into a lot of money. This is good information because it indicates that Fergus was blackmailing someone with lots of money who had a motive to murder him.
Routine checking reveals that Moira, the new teacher, was lying about being blackmailed. She admits to Hamish that she’s a frustrated novelist who likes to make things up. She did say that the local banker’s wife, who was having an affair, was being blackmailed by someone. Hamish isn’t sure she’s telling the truth.
Back at the police station, Clarry tells Hamish that Priscilla wants Clarry to cook tonight at the Tommal Castle Hotel. Apparently, some of the long-time workers at the hotel suddenly quit because they were promised more money at the new hotel when it opens. Hamish isn’t happy to lose Clarry during murder investigations but he lets him go and tells Priscilla to set up a meeting with her father, the Colonel, right away.
Hamish tracks down another villager, Archie Maclean, who was reported talking to Fergus the day before he died. Archie says that he was out sneaking a drink or two by the river when Fergus walked by. Fergus was dressed up in a suit, which was unusual, and he was very sober and happy, also unusual. He looked like he was on his way to an important meeting. This is more evidence that Fergus was dealing with rich people which may have been way above his pay grade or blackmail skills.
Hamish visits Mr. Ionides, the owner of the new hotel, and finds out that the business plan is to set up a luxury resort for rich fishermen and women. Ionides claims to know nothing about the murders. As Hamish is leaving, he hears the man tell his secretary that the police officer seems dimwitted because of inbreeding.
Hamish lets the slur roll off and calls up a police officer in Glasgow, the city where Ionides' business is located. He learns that his contact, Olivia, died of cancer a few months earlier but her detective partner, George Mcline, tells Hamish that there is an air of crookedness around the Greek magnate’s dealings. His restaurants are poorly run with all sorts of health code violations that he tries to bribe his way around. He routinely uses illegal immigrant labor that he exploits in his businesses. The police haven't nailed him for anything yet but the investigations are ongoing.
Hamish visits Jeff Warner, the chef who quit for a job in the new hotel, setting up the need for Clarry to cook at the Tommal Castle Hotel. Jeff doesn’t know much about the murders. As Hamish is leaving the apartment, he notices that his sheets and bedspreads are the same pink color of the thread he found near the trash bin that contained Fergus’s body. Jeff got the bedspread and sheets from the new hotel as a welcome-to-our-company gift. Hamish knows that the pink thread at the crime scene probably came from the new hotel, which sets up a possible connection between the murder and Mr. Ionides, the shady businessman. Hamish doesn’t have enough evidence to get a search warrant for the hotel so he’ll keep digging.
Hamish meets with Colonel Halburton-Smythe to ask him why the Colonel didn’t report that he had a row with Fergus before his murder. It turns out that Fergus had proof in a fax that he had found that Ionides was going to poison the areas near the Colonel’s hotel and hire many of his workers away from him. The goal was to put the Tommal Castle Hotel, a local institution for decades, out of business. Fergus offered to sell the fax to Halburton-Smythe for big bucks but no deal was struck. The Colonel had talked to Ionides who assured him that Fergus was lying.
Hamish tells Priscilla what’s going on with the murder investigations and tells her that he’s pretty sure that Ionides is behind everything. She agrees and says that they have to find that fax, which will make the hotel developer look sleazy, which will help bring him down. She tells Hamish that since Fergus’s death, no one had emptied the big containers that contain the recycled material that people threw away. Perhaps Ionides' secretary had thrown out a copy of the fax, which might still be in the bin.
It’s a long shot, but it’s all Hamish has. The big recycle box happens to be on church property so Priscilla gets permission from the pastor’s wife to open the bin. Hamish needs a lot of people to sift through a week’s worth of discarded paper so he convinces many villagers to help out. Hamish gets the local contractor to provide a bug crane to lift the bin. The local champion at caber tossing (a traditional Scottish athletic competition in which a tree trunk is thrown for distance), Geordie, uses his muscle to break open the recycle box and the fun begins as villagers sift through many scraps of paper.
No one found the fax. Hamish is depressed but he notices that a bunch of recycled materials fell out of the bin and onto the ground. Hamish found a big manila envelope stuffed with correspondence from the new hotel, including the incriminating fax and other sketchy documents.
The recycled papers were all over the ground now. Hamish said that he’d take care of cleaning it up later. Unfortunately, chief environmental officer Fleming had scheduled a big media event for the next day. Instead of a pristine environment, the media would find trash strewn everywhere. As Hamish drifted off to sleep, he had not seen her advisory on the event.
Only two people show up for Mrs. Fleming’s big show, including Tom Stein, a very hungover stringer for the Glasgow Morning News. He doesn’t want to be there. Nor does his photographer, Paul.
The police secured a warrant and searched Ionides’ office, much to the chagrin of his secretary. Meanwhile the hotel developer was making his escape in a helicopter. Very strong Geordie, who had opened the recycle bin earlier, happened to have a very heavy throwing hammer with him, the kind they use in track and field meets. He lets it fly at the helicopter, and, because this is a work of fiction, the hammer hits the copter and brings it down into the water. Mr. Ionides dies in the crash but his pilot survives thanks to Hamish’s quick action.
Tom Stein and his photographer capture all of the action. Suddenly, Tom’s hangover isn’t so bad. This will make him very famous in journalism circles.
Mrs. Fleming is outraged that the helicopter crash upstaged her environmental event so she smacks Hamish on the face, an assault that Tom's photographer, Paul, dutifully records. Hamish takes a swing at her. Paul takes a picture of Hamish after the confrontation with his pants hanging down and his dowdy underwear showing. It makes the newspaper and the villagers buy him new briefs.
Geordie is arrested for taking down the copter, but Hamish insists that he ordered the action, which he didn’t, but he can’t let Geordie’s life be ruined. Hamish is suspended from the police force. Mrs. Fleming is fired from her job as chief environmental officer.
There still is no hard evidence that Ionides or his stooges murdered anyone. The police interrogate his secretary but don't get much.
A month after the helicopter crash, Hamish is still suspended but Geordie is a free man. Authorities believed that Hamish did order the hammer throw that crashed the copter. The pilot, Ian Simpson, was in custody since he was a known criminal with outstanding warrants. Hamish’s boss, Jimmy Anderson, has been trying to get Simpson to break and he finally succeeded. The pilot wants to do a deal.
Ionides killed Fergus who had been demanding £10,000 pounds in blackmail money. Simpson and Ionides were going to dump the body into the loch (lake) but they got tired and dumped it in the Currie sisters’ recycle bin.
Ionides' real business was drug dealing. His hotels were fronts for his drug trade. Police raided his holdings and indeed found lots of illegal drugs and many drug dealers.
Hamish got dressed in his dress uniform for his review/trial to see if he could keep his job. Macbeth’s big boss, Superintendent Daviot, was ready to dismiss Hamish from the force when a senior detective pointed out that Macbeth’s hard work, unorthodox as it might be sometimes, led to bringing down a major drug network and finding a murderer. The tribunal decides that Macbeth will remain a police officer but will lose his sergeant's stripes. He is delighted. He wasn't wild about being a sergeant anyway.
Ian Simpson swears that he and Ionides did not murder Angus Ettrik, so Hamish still has to figure that out. He and Clarry go over their notes and reopen the case. Hamish, Jimmy, and Clarry go off to re-interview Angus’s widow, Kirsty, and other neighbors who might have new information. They don’t.
A few months pass and the snow is flying in the Highlands. Clarry is going to marry Fergus’s widow, Martha, and the village is excited. Priscilla comes back to help run the hotel for Christmas so Hamish is happy.
Martha mentions in passing to Hamish that she and Kirsty had something in common. They were both beaten regularly by their husbands. This is news to Hamish. Angus only beat Kirsty and burned her with an iron in places where it wouldn't show so she hid the abuse.
Hamish runs into Fiona, the banker’s wife. While they’re chatting, she reveals that a few days earlier, Kirsty deposited a check for £250,000 pounds which she said was from an investment that just matured. Fiona says that her husband thought that it was strange that the check was dated from last July. Why did she wait so long to put it in the bank? Hamish has gotten this information informally so he asks Jimmy to get a warrant to check Kirsty’s bank account.
He’s off to see Kirsty to see if there’s a good explanation for the money. It turns out that Kirsty had some investments from before she was married and she also just won a big lottery prize. When she got the lottery check, Angus, who was drunk and had just beaten her, grabbed it and said it was his. She flew into a rage and hit him on the head with a hammer. She said she couldn’t take it any longer.
Hamish has to arrest her but he does put her in contact with a good lawyer. A few months later she was found not guilty at her trial because of the steady abuse she had taken, which was testified to by many villagers. Of course, none of them had been aware of the abuse while it was happening but they went to bat for Kirsty.
A while later, Hamish’s dog, Lugs, starts to wail. He won’t stop. Hamish has a feeling that he should check in on Kirsty. He goes to her croft (house) and finds her dead. She had hanged herself. Her note simply said that she could no longer live with herself.
Hamish calls the coroner and goes back to the station. He’s sad.
He hears someone knocking on the door. It’s Priscilla, back to work at the hotel after she finished her latest free-lance computer programming assignment. They're off to dinner.
Hamish is no longer sad.
Bob’s Take
By the numbers. Despite the fact that these books are light and humorous, they are tight police procedurals. Hamish and his colleagues follow classic investigative procedures to catch the criminal. Once they find a new clue, they are tireless in figuring out what it means.
Looks can be deceiving. Hamish looks goofy and strikes people as a bit slow. That’s deliberate in that his being underestimated helps him solve cases. Crooks don’t think that he’s very sharp so they often let their guard down. Hamish is a lot like Peter Falk’s Lieutenant Columbo in the 1970s television series.
Scenic settings. The village of Lochdubh and the Scottish Highlands with many beautiful lakes and forests are almost characters in the books. <strong>Lots of whisky drinking.</strong> Scotland is famous for Scotch whisky and many of the characters in the books frequently imbibe. Hamish has a bottle of whisky in his office which he routinely offers to people who come in to give him information on a case or just to get a free drink.
Mac and Mc. Almost all of the people in the books have last names that begin with “Mac” with an occasional “Mc” showing up. Since the books are set in Scotland, that makes sense.
M. C. Beaton had a long run. Writing under about a dozen pen names, Marion Chesney Beaton cranked out over 160 novels, with Hamish Macbeth (34) and Agatha Raisin (30) books being her major series. She died in December of 2019 at age 83.
Scottish BBC TV show. Hamish Macbeth was a television comedy-drama that was first aired in the mid-1990s. Robert Carlyle, famous for his roles in the movies <em>Trainspotting</em> and <em>The Full Monty,</em> played the lead. It is an enjoyable series that we discovered on Amazon Prime TV during the pandemic.
