Showing results by author "M.C. Beaton" in All Categories

Just when Hamish most needs him - the dentist turns up dead... In Scotland, where thrift and a 'nice set of dentures' are generally admired, dental surgeon Dr Frederick Gilchrist's cheap rates and penchant for pulling teeth have gained him a clientele. However, wiser Highlanders (like Hamish Macbeth) opt to steer clear of this reputed womanizer's all-too-busy hands. Only jaw-throbbing agony drives Hamish to Gilchrist's surgery, but what he finds is the dentist's dead body - putting several angry husbands in the frame for murder...

Not bored to death but murder most foul... Celebrated author John Heppel is known in Lochdubh as a self-important bore, prone to belittling the scribblings of the locals in his creative writing class. So when he's found dead, his mouth oozing ink, it seems a fitting fate. But for PC Hamish Macbeth, the murder is more than a disruption of idyllic village life - especially when the media arrive, trailing in their wake DCI Heather Meikle, a maneater with a taste for bachelor police constables.

Agatha Raisin's detective agency has become so successful that she decides to take time off for rest and relaxation. But as soon as she does, she remembers that when she does have time on her hands, she doesn't know what to do with it. So it doesn't take much for the vicar of a nearby village to persuade her to help publicise the church fete - especially when the event organiser, George Selby, turns out to be a handsome widower.

PC Hamish Macbeth can't help but admire the resourcefulness of the Highlanders during the recession - in tough times they have to lure tourists to their sleepy towns and the quaint village of Braikie has come up with a novel solution. It really doesn't have that much to offer apart from a place of rare beauty called Buchan's Wood, which the clued-up local tourist board director has rechristened "The Fairy Glen" and has had brochures printed with a beautiful kingfisher rising from a lake on the cover.

Sergeant Hamish Macbeth is alarmed to receive a report from a woman in the small village of Cronish in the Scottish Highlands. She has been brutally attacked and the criminal is on the loose. But upon further investigation, Hamish discovers that she was lying about the crime. So when the same woman calls him back about an intruder, he simply marvels at her compulsion to lie. This time, though, she is telling the truth. Her body is found in her home and Hamish must sort through all of her lies to solve the crime.

When the Duke of Pelham returns to his town house at 67 Clarges Street he is grimly determined to find himself a suitable wife, and love will have nothing to do with his selection.

Agatha Raisin becomes embroiled in a turmoil of jealousy and lies when the tranquillity of her local bowls club explodes into a storm of accusation and intrigue - and murder. Her private life is no less turbulent when a past suitor reappears just as her ex-husband seems intent on rekindling their romance, and her close friend, Bill Wong, is in danger of losing the woman he loves. Events take an even darker turn when Agatha realises that, in pursuing the bowling green killer, she is putting her own life in danger.

Can the feisty Agatha cut it as a private investigator? She soon learns that running her own detective agency in the Cotswolds is not quite like starring in a Raymond Chandler movie. But then walks in wealthy divorcee Catherine Laggat-Brown, and Agatha is given her first real case. Death threats, blackmail and physical attack soon follow, and once again Agatha is off scouring the countryside for clues and showing friends and enemies alike what Raisin Investigations can do!

The poor relations banded together some time ago to run The Poor Relation Hotel in the hope their embarrassed relatives would buy them out, but as the hotel prospered, so they began to enjoy the fruit of their labour. But once again they need money to go on and so poor, faded Miss Tonks is dispatched to her rich sister to steal something valuable from her in order to keep the hotel on its feet.

Longing for a life of emancipation, Lady Rose Summer has abandoned the comforts of her parent's house to become self supporting. But life as a working woman isn't quite as liberating as Rose has imagined - fortunately for her, though, her drudgery comes to an end when old acquaintance Freddy Pomfret is murdered and her help - and upper class connections - are required by amateur sleuth Captain Harry Cathcart.

All Sergeant Hamish Macbeth ever wants is a quiet life in the tranquil surroundings of Lochdubh, his home village in the Scottish Highlands. Although the area he polices is vast, he's happiest when he's working alone, yet the police authorities insist he has an assistant. In the past, they have supplied a variety of problematic misfits, but they surpass themselves with their latest effort - an American named James Bland.

James Harrison has recently moved to a restored hunting lodge in Sutherland with his gorgeous private nurse Gloria Dainty. When Hamish visits Mr. Harrison to welcome him to the neighborhood, the old man treats him very rudely. Gloria apologises for her employer's behavior, and Hamish takes the plunge and invites her out for dinner. On the appointed evening, Hamish waits for Gloria at the restaurant. And waits. But Gloria never shows up. Four days later, Gloria's body washes up on the beach near Braikie.

Mrs Gentle has fooled everyone into thinking she is as sweet as she sounds - Gentle by name and gentle by nature. But local constable Hamish Macbeth isn't fooled. He believes this little old lady is actually quite sly and vicious, but he's in a minority of one. Or is he? When Mrs Gentle dies under unusual circumstances, the villagers of Lochdubh are shocked and outraged. Chief Detective Inspector Blair suspects that members of her family may be involved but Hamish thinks there's much more to the story - and is willing to get rough to solve the riddle of Mrs Gentle's mysterious demise.

Lady Rose Summer prides herself on not being a jealous woman - and she knows her engagement to Captain Harry Cathcart is only a ruse to keep her parents from shipping her off to India to find a husband. But then Harry's latest client, Dolores Duval - French, curvaceous, flirtatious - starts appearing everywhere at his side. And that changes everything. In a fit of temper Rose threatens Dolores - only to be found the very next day standing over her dead body.

A sudden outbreak of maliciousness strikes the town of Lochdubh in the form of a rash of poison pen letters. Things turn deadly when the local postmistress is found hanged in her room... with a vicious note beneath her dangling feet. Though his superiors call it suicide, PC Hamish Macbeth pronounces it murder. But Hamish is soon distracted by Jenny Ogilvie, a friend of his ex-fiancee, who arrives in Lochdubh to seduce him. And then he's ambushed by local reporter Elspeth Grant, who sets out to land the story - and Hamish - for herself.

Even though Agatha Raisin loathes Christmas panto, her friend Mrs Bloxby, the vicar's wife, has persuaded her to support the local am dram society in their festive offering. Stifling a yawn at the production of Babes in the Wood, Agatha watches the baker playing an ogre strut and threaten on stage until a trapdoor opens... followed by a scream and silence! Surely this wasn't the way the scene was rehearsed? When it turns out the local baker had been murdered most horribly, Agatha puts her team of detectives on the case.

What do you do if you are of noble stock, but impoverished, and living in London with a certain style to maintain? One has to work... but One's relatives will be appalled when One turns One's hand to trade - and opens a hotel, The Poor Relation, offering employment to others of the same social standing and in the same awkward situation. This is precisely what Mrs Fortescue decides upon and, together with friend Colonel Sandhurst, transforms her decrepit Bond Street home into a posh hotel, offering guests the pleasure of being waited upon by the nobility.

After a romantic disappointment and an undeserved demotion, Scots village bobby Hamish Macbeth decides a week's holiday at the coastal village of Skag might be just the ticket. He's dead wrong, of course: the food is dire, and the man in the next room nags his wife so loudly and continuously that more than one person at the Friendly House bed-and-breakfast wishes him dead, though only Hamish is heard threatening him. When this chap's body is found floating in the river Skag, Hamish is the prime suspect.

PC Dorothy McIver quickly shows how determined she is to win over the locals, and she certainly seems to bring out the best in Macbeth. Then comes a brutal murder, and the pair find themselves plunged into a tangled web of conspiracy that acquires a sinister strand when the chilling shadow of Glasgow's underworld creeps to the Highlands and the peaceful village of Lochdubh.

She couldn't paint to save her life - so someone's given her a lesson by taking it! Most newcomers don't stay long in remote Lochdubh - usually boredom, dampness and nosy locals drive them out. But it looks as if artist Effie Garrand has come to stay. When Hamish Macbeth calls on her he's amazed to find the woman in residence after a particularly harsh winter. Unfortunately, Effie is also quite delusional, having convinced herself that fellow local artist Jock Fleming is in love with her, and that they are engaged.