Rating: 
Summary: A good book
Review: This is the first in a series of mysteries featuring the detective work of small town, Highland Scottish detective Hamish Macbeth, P.C. In this story, John and Heather Cartwright's fishing school is thrown into confusion when the most unladylike Lady Jane Winters arrives. She seems to know the skeletons hidden in the closet of everyone attending the school, and is keen on letting everyone know it. In short order, Lady Jane becomes quite unpopular, and then quite dead. Now, it is up to Hamish to find out who did it and why.My wife has been a big Hamish Macbeth fan for years, and finally I broke down and began to read them. This was not my favorite Hamish Macbeth book, but I did enjoy it. I liked the setting and the characters, and I especially liked the Cast of Characters list at the start of the book. So, if you are interested in a story set in modern Scotland, or just a good mystery, then I highly recommend this book to you.
Rating:
Summary: Excellent series
Review: This is the first in the Hamish MacBeth series, so it lacks some of the polish of the subsequent books. A little awkward at times (and too much info on fishing), the series picks up as it progresses. If you didn't really care for this one, keep reading them, they get better. She has become one of my favorite authors, both with this series and with her Agatha Raisin series.
Rating: 
Summary: Maybe I have no sense of humor
Review: To be fair, most of the people I know who have read these books like them. I never liked any of them too much, but based on the enthusiam of friends, tried several. The very best part is the evocation of the village, its people and its surroundings, but although I love that sort of writing, I don't find it worthwhile when I have to spend time in the company of the main character. Hamish has his good points, like his devotion and care for his younger siblings, but he's not terribly honest. I refer here not so much to his habit of barging in and cadging food that other people paid for under cover of his duties as a policeman, but to his habit of running up enormous long-distance telephone bills on other people's phones. Opening a phone bill anywhere around Hamish's village must involve a bit of fearful suspense. I assume that Beaton expects us to find it funny, but I don't. I assume that she also expects us to think that it's o.k. to do it to his on-and-off girlfriend's father since the man is rather a pompous snob, but I don't. Especially since Hamish feels that these little thefts are a special privilege of his, not a generousity that he would extend in his turn. As if this attitude of what is mine-is-mine and what is yours-is-mine is not bad enough, Hamish gets quite hypocritically sanctimonious at times. A policeman obviously can't refrain from arresting people because he himself has human failings. But in one book, a guest takes a bottle of whiskey from a bar accidentally left unlocked; he claims that he intended to pay for it when it checked out. Hamish in a ridiculous fit of self-righteous ire dismisses the alleged intention to pay and lambastes the guest as though he himself wouldn't have grabbed every bottle in reach if he had the opportunity, and it hadn't been his girlfriend's bar. I dropped the series in disgust.
Rating:
Summary: Maybe I have no sense of humor
Review: To be fair, most of the people I know who have read these books like them. I never liked any of them too much, but based on the enthusiam of friends, tried several. The very best part is the evocation of the village, its people and its surroundings, but although I love that sort of writing, I don't find it worthwhile when I have to spend time in the company of the main character. Hamish has his good points, like his devotion and care for his younger siblings, but he's not terribly honest. I refer here not so much to his habit of barging in and cadging food that other people paid for under cover of his duties as a policeman, but to his habit of running up enormous long-distance telephone bills on other people's phones. Opening a phone bill anywhere around Hamish's village must involve a bit of fearful suspense. I assume that Beaton expects us to find it funny, but I don't. I assume that she also expects us to think that it's o.k. to do it to his on-and-off girlfriend's father since the man is rather a pompous snob, but I don't. Especially since Hamish feels that these little thefts are a special privilege of his, not a generousity that he would extend in his turn. As if this attitude of what is mine-is-mine and what is yours-is-mine is not bad enough, Hamish gets quite hypocritically sanctimonious at times. A policeman obviously can't refrain from arresting people because he himself has human failings. But in one book, a guest takes a bottle of whiskey from a bar accidentally left unlocked; he claims that he intended to pay for it when it checked out. Hamish in a ridiculous fit of self-righteous ire dismisses the alleged intention to pay and lambastes the guest as though he himself wouldn't have grabbed every bottle in reach if he had the opportunity, and it hadn't been his girlfriend's bar. I dropped the series in disgust.
Rating: 
Summary: major disappointment
Review: When I first started reading this book I didn't quite know what to think. However, I quickly found that I was having quite a bit of fun reading it. Beaton fills the book with plenty of interesting suspects and no one is more offbeat than the detective Hamish MacBeth. For a light and enjoyable read I can't recommend this book enough. We don't learn that much about Macbeth in this story, but if future stories he becomes more of the focus of Beaton's novels. The MacBeth novels have quickly become some of my favorite British (or Scotish to be more correct) mysteries.
Rating:
Summary: A fun and very different British mystery.
Review: When I first started reading this book I didn't quite know what to think. However, I quickly found that I was having quite a bit of fun reading it. Beaton fills the book with plenty of interesting suspects and no one is more offbeat than the detective Hamish MacBeth. For a light and enjoyable read I can't recommend this book enough. We don't learn that much about Macbeth in this story, but if future stories he becomes more of the focus of Beaton's novels. The MacBeth novels have quickly become some of my favorite British (or Scotish to be more correct) mysteries.
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