The charm of the Scottish Highlands and a truly likable detective offer airy bliss for mystery lovers in M.C. Beaton's Hamish Macbeth series.

For anyone not familiar with this fine series, Hamish Macbeth is a constable in the Highland village of Lochdubh, and much of the enjoyment for the reader is derived from the quirky interactions between Hamish and Lochdubh's residents. The lanky and red-haired Hamish is a bachelor the entire village would like to see romantically attached. There seems to be no end of choices, but Hamish can never quite settle his heart on just one. While being a quite gifted investigator, he makes his crime solving abilities appear as fortuitous happenings in order to remain under the radar, so that he may remain in his beloved Lochdubh with his animals, including a wild Highland cat he has attempted to domesticate with shaky results.

In Death of a Dreamer, village tongues are wagging when a local artist named Effie, a dreamer who lives in her own world, claims to be marrying a visiting artist named Jock. He denies offering to marry her, however. He has an ex-wife with a grudge, and a female agent named Betty to whom Hamish is more than a bit attracted, which of course creates more village gossip.

Hamish smells trouble on the Highland winds and it isn't long before Effie's somewhat sad existence comes to an end. When old flame Priscilla returns and Hamish has Glasgow reporter Elspeth to deal with as well, will he be too distracted to get at the truth? Having a C.S.I. team which gets inebriated at the local pub, leading to Jedi fights with blue-lights substituting for light sabers, doesn't help our favorite constable much. Adding another spanner to the works, Hamish is teamed with a rather ambitious colleague named Robin, which is certain to lead to trouble in a village like Lochdubh.

Everyone writes off Effie's death as a suicide at first, but Hamish knows better. The deeper he looks into Effie's past, and her interactions with people, the longer his list of suspects becomes. A second death occurs before Hamish's wild cat saves the day in this fun and enjoyable mystery.

Filled with charm, politically incorrect humor and a quirky atmosphere which will leave you pining for a visit to Scotland, this is a fine series somewhere between a cozy and a traditional detective story. If you like your mysteries to leave a smile on your face, then Hamish and Lochdubh is a place you'll want to visit as often as possible. Highly recommended! ( )

Effie Garrard had moved to Lochdubh last year, to a small cottage in the hills. She was an artist with plans to her art sold in the gift shops and hotels, to the tourists who came up from the south.

When she is found dead, the first guess is suicide and the police go with it. Seems she’d stirred up gossip with some lies and maybe felt she couldn’t face the locals.

Hamish thinks it’s murder — and maybe some of those lies had to do with it. His investigation turns up more lies and secrets — and not just about Effie.

While looking for clues and motives, Hamish also must deal with the return f some ex-girlfriends; an area where he isn’t the most adept.

Set in a small highland town, this is an enjoyable cozy series with a cast of good characters. ( )

Macbeth and the Fantasist
Review of the Blackstone Audio Inc. audiobook edition (2007) of the original Mysterious Press hardcover (2006)

Lochdubh village constable Hamish Macbeth has to contend with yet another incomer. Dreamer Effie Garrard imagines herself in a relationship with a famous artist. Various relationship complications ensue and of course several murders intervene to bring disruption to Macbeth's calm village life. Hamish's wildcat Sonsie and dog Lugs come to the rescue in the end in a dramatic conclusion.

I've exhausted the availability of free audiobooks for this delightful series from the Audible Plus option so I'm now seeking out the rest of the series from the Toronto Public Library. I'm still hoping to read them in order as much as possible. ( )

Any writer who churned out books in the numbers that M.C. Beaton did surely has a stable of ghost writers. But they should be answering to the author, or at the very least his or her editors.

But it seems that, in Hamish Macbeth's 21st outing in Death of a Dreamer, it was a ghost who composed the story and it somehow slipped past the editing process (although it was well proof-read.) I haven't been reading in these in order over the years, so I don't know when this began.

From the first line of this book, the text is clunky, the dialogue wooden, and the characterizations twee (and M.C. would not have approved of THAT). I tried, I really tried to get caught up in the story and enjoy my visit with Hamish, but this book proved to be the death of my relationship with him. Too bad, it was so enjoyable early on.

This is a good series to listen to in the car-- don't have to concentrate too much, and the characters and Scottish accent are charming. ( )