Death of a Bore
M.C. Beaton
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Buy *Death of a Bore: A Hamish Macbeth Mystery* online

Death of a Bore: A Hamish Macbeth Mystery
M.C. Beaton
Grand Central Publishing
Paperback
272 pages
January 2006
rated 4 of 5 possible stars

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Constable Hamish Macbeth feels uneasy at the excitement and anticipation engendered among Lochdubh residents by the announcement of a writing class taught by visiting author John Heppel. The author soon proves a publicity hound who will do anything to get on-air time. And at the class, this boastful and insensitive writer callously shreds the eager villagers’ writing attempts and mocks them in the process. Before long the village is up in arms against this pretentious little upstart, and Macbeth’s worst fears are proved true when Heppel is murdered.

It now falls upon Hamish to perform the disagreeable task of rooting out the culprit from among his own friends and neighbors. The media descends upon this sleepy hamlet and brings in its wake Macbeth’s nemesis, Blair, along with a man-eating new superior, Heather Meikle, and Macbeth’s former girlfriend Elspeth Grant, now a city newspaper reporter. As the body count continues to rise, Macbeth has to overcome personal doubts and grave danger in order to get to the truth.

No matter how laconic or low-tech, Beaton’s Hamish Macbeth series consistently retains the reader’s interest through both the intricate mystery at the heart of each story and the ongoing personal travails of its central character, Constable Hamish Macbeth. Thanks to myriad suspects and motives, this mystery is difficult to guess while tension and danger increase with the page count. In addition to accurately capturing the small-town atmosphere and its attendant gossip and closeness, in this story Beaton also takes a mocking look at the behind-the-scenes goings-on in a television studio. Macbeth’s personal love life continues on par at its usual to-be-or-not-to-be pace and continues to keep the readers in suspense in this aspect. All in all, a Hamish Macbeth mystery somehow always feels cozy, inviting and perpetually interesting.



Originally published on Curled Up With A Good Book at www.curledup.com. © Rashmi Srinivas, 2005

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