Death of a Kingfisher

"Fresh Meat" by Susan Amper for Criminal Element

M. C. Beaton’s Hamish Macbeth series is 27 years old, and while the mysteries have lost some steam, the hapless love life of Hamish Macbeth and the scenic highlands of Scotland still hold lots of appeal.

In Death of a Kingfisher, the village of Braikie in the Scottish highlands, like everywhere else, is suffering through a recession. A wealthy landowner has left the town a place of rare beauty call Buchan’s Wood. Soon the Wood is renamed “The Fairy Glen” and it isn’t long before tourists are lured to the area. Macbeth is none too happy, for part of the appeal of the highlands is its remoteness.

Read the rest at http://www.criminalelement.com/blogs/2012/02/fresh-meat-death-of-a-kingfisher-by...

A bittersweet pleasure, as this is the most recent book in this series and we'll have to wait another year for more story! Having just recently discovered this author and series, we've enjoyed all 28 visits to the village of Lochdubh in northern Scotland (or "Sutherland" as the Vikings called it when they came south for a break from their weather).

Beaton's storytelling is magical, in that she creates such lively and distinct characters with few words. None of the books has taken us more than several evenings of reading aloud, yet the characters, environment, community, relationships, and murder-of-the-moment are richly detailed and seem quite real. ( )

Really weird! Read as if it were written by someone other than Beaton ( )

This was my first Hamish Macbeth book and it was the perfect example of a cozy mystery set in Scotland. I definitely want to read more. When the death of the Kingfisher sets into motion a sting of murders, Hamish conducts the investigation like a true police detective. The characters are extremely realistic and believable and well thought out, they could be real people involved in a real police investigation. Hamish and his side kick Dick are village bobbies who have both humorous and serious sides as they undertake the investigation of numerous murders. This was a great read that keeps you guessing about who did it. If you love mysteries I would highly recommend this series.

Thanks to Grand Central Publishing and Net Galley for sending me this book. ( )

http://cozylittlebookjournal.blogspot.ca/2012/03/death-of-kingfisher-by-mc-beato...

The Hamish Macbeth series is my all-time favourite series in the cozy mystery genre. In fact, it is one of the reasons I love the genre so much. I have plowed through many a book for no other reason than that I hoped it would contain just a little of the charm of a great M.C. Beaton tale. Having said that, Ms. Beaton has been at this a very long time and some books are bound to be better than others.

Death of a Kingfisher is still very good and it's certainly not the total misstep that Death of a Chimney Sweep turned out to be, but it is not exactly a home run either. The main problem--and this is characteristic of many of the books in the series--is that half of the plot action takes place in what feels like a very long anticlimax. That is to say that our hero, the intrepid Hamish Macbeth, solves the titular crime about halfway into the book (in this case it is not only a kingfisher whose death is being investigated but several human victims as well, obviously) and then the rest of the book is told as a jumbled assortment of facts from the points of view of several characters but without any real suspense or mystery. It's like only the first half is a whodunnit while the second half is a bafflingly long epilogue.

Still, Beaton at her worst (which this was not) is still more satisfying to fans of the genre than many writers at their best.

Disclaimer: I received a digital galley of this book free from the publisher from NetGalley.com. I was not obliged to write a favourable review, or even any review at all. The opinions expressed are strictly my own. ( )