Death of a Ghost

November 28, 2016
When Hanover “Handy” Ebrington, the new owner of ramshackle Castle Drim, hears ghostly noises, Sgt. Hamish Macbeth investigates, in Beaton’s atmospheric 33rd mystery featuring the Lochdubh, Scotland, policeman (after 2016’s Death of a Nurse). Hamish is inclined to think that Handy is being “haunted” by vandals, so he and his partner, Constable Charlie Carter, arrange to spend the night in the castle tower to catch the miscreants red-handed. Instead they find a body and a likely smugglers’ drop. When more bodies turn up, Hamish’s superiors are eager to seize upon easy solutions. But as usual, Hamish’s senses tell him the answer is far more complicated than it seems. Few fictional detectives are more appealing than fey, redheaded Hamish with his taste for unsuitable women and no desire to leave his peaceful Scottish Highland home. Series fans and newcomers alike will enjoy spending time with Hamish and the beguiling inhabitants of Lochdubh. Agent: Barbara Lowenstein, Lowenstein Associates.

December 15, 2016
A wily Highland police sergeant solves a case the higher-ups want covered up. Extracting himself from yet another unsuccessful romance (Death of a Nurse, 2016), Sgt. Hamish Macbeth realizes that he prefers to hang out in his beloved Lochdubh with his clumsy constable, Charlie Carter. Charlie's living in an illegal basement flat in the Tommel Castle Hotel while Hamish, who has the run of his small police house with his beloved dogs, is heartbroken because he had to release his wild cat in a sanctuary. Retired Chief Superintendent Hanover "Handy" Ebrington calls on the police to investigate a haunting at the castle he owns in the dark and lonely village of Drim. Although no ghosts are found, Hamish does discover a body that disappears and reappears in the nearby loch. The dead man is professor John Gordon, much disliked for his insistence that there is no God. The professor had been seen in Inverness lunching in a decidedly down-market cafe with Olivia Sinclair, the wife of a wealthy man and the object of local minister Peter Haggis' desire. When Hamish discovers both a hotbed of unrequited passions and a smuggling ring, he and Charlie are hard-pressed to unravel the tangled skein, especially as his ambitious superior does everything he can to get Hamish in trouble with Superintendent Daviot, who's all for the quiet life. When Police Scotland declares the case solved, Hamish is certain they're wrong and risks his career proving it. Fans of the handsome Highlander will delight in his continuing penchant for the wrong women and his utter lack of ambition despite his superior detecting skills, which this complex case puts on handsome display.

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December 1, 2016
The thirty-third entry in this popular series starring the perennially unhappy and unlucky-in-love Hamish Macbeth, now a sergeant in the Scottish Highlands village of Lochdubh, will engage series fans but may leave newcomers bewildered. Beaton does very little here to catch new readers up with the characters, unlike, for example, the graceful way Alexander McCall Smith starts each new book in the No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency series. But Beaton fans will recognize Macbeth's Highlands beat and his difficulties with bosses and lovers. The mystery hinges on sightings of a ghost in a ruined castle on a loch (Beaton does little with the visual possibilities). Macbeth and a constable spend the night. No ghost is sighted, but the constable's fall into a cellar reveals a corpse, which disappears after Macbeth and his subordinate leave the castle for some food. The novel boasts good plotting that expands outward from the body in the castle cellar, as well as intriguing bits concerning a minister and a seductive married woman with whom the minister is involved, but it lacks Beaton's usual evocative use of landscape.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2016, American Library Association.)

September 15, 2016

Scottish policeman Hamish Macbeth wants to prove it's no ghost creating those flashing lights and whooshing sounds in a ruined Scottish castle, so he and subordinate Charlie "Clumsy" Carson spend a night in the castle. No ghost, but there is a dead body. With a 50,000-copy first printing.

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