Macbeth and the Outsider
Review of the Grand Central Publishing paperback edition (1994) of the Constable & Robinson hardcover original (1993)

After reading and enjoying "Death of Yesterday" due to its Estonia connection I started to search out some earlier Hamish Macbeth mysteries and Marian at my favourite Toronto independent book shop Sleuth of Baker Street had several (some used) in stock.

Charming Man has Macbeth investigating a disappearance and then a death in a small village called Drim which is within his Lochdubh beat. Everyone else dismisses his suspicions but Macbeth perseveres as usual with his casual methods.

i'm thoroughly enjoying this M.C. Beaton series and am going to try to catch up on it in order from now on as Macbeth's personal relationships over time are best read in the proper order. ( )

Continued to enjoy the exploits of HM. I think the nature of the village was vividly described and made me chuckle at times. Will carry on with this series ( )

Death Of A Charming Man (1994) (H. Macbeth #10) by M.C. Beaton. Peter Hynd has the looks and charm of a young movie star. That alone would have Hamish Macbeth wondering why such a man would ever buy a small house in the town of Drim. This is a place set between two dark mountains along a black as night loch and with people as cold as the fish at the bottom of the loch. But there Mr. Hynd is, flattering the local women into making fools of themselves and driving their husbands into fits of jealousy, and anger, and perhaps worse.
The young girls raised in Drim head off for the big cities once free of school leaving only a gaggle of middle-aged, and beyond, biddies behind. They flock off to the only beauty salon and jump about in the suddenly popular exercise class. Hamish comes along because Drim is part of his policing area, and upon arriving he gets a very bad sense of the mood of the place.
A short while later he gets a call about a body being found there. Not Hynd as he suspected would happen Instead it turns out to be a local woman who appears to have had a small accident walking in spike heels upon the pebbled beach of the loch. Hynd himself appears to have left a few weeks earlier like so many other new-comers to the wilds of Scotland.
None of this makes Hamish feel right and the young daughter of the dead woman says things that make him feel there is much to be discovered. In an attempt to flee from his faltering relationship with Priscilla, he takes a wee vacation to travel to London in search of the missing man, but ends up in Drim himself. Using his natural charm and ability to gossip, he wiles himself into the heart of the small community and manages to uncover the surprising truth.
And he uncovers another body to seal the story.
Reluctantly Hamish Macbeth manages to solve the mystery, uncover the killer and get demoted by doing so. All very complicated and a nice cosy case. ( )

This series is the absolute definition of a comfort read for me. What elevates them is MC Beaton's wry humor and relatively unromantic view of the people and geography of the Scottish Highlands. I'd still like to live in Lochdubh, but I know what I'm in for.

This installment concerns the death of the titular "charming man," a newcomer who has all the village women putting on makeup and going to workout classes, competing to catch his attention. When he disappears suspicion falls on a number of the village men. There are murders along the way, and the villain turned out to be somewhat unexpected (for me at least). In terms of Hamish's ongoing personal saga, he's engaged to Priscilla Halburton-Smythe, but it's not going well. ( )

I very much enjoyed this 11th entry in the Hamish MacBeth series by M.C. Beaton. There are 32 books in this series and in this case I'm glad I have that many in front of me. By this time I know all of the characters in the Highland village where MacBeth is a P.C. The mystery in this book takes place in an even smaller village that falls within MacBeth's territory.

A very handsome and charming man comes into the village, buys an old home and begins to make improvements to it. He also flirts with all the women, has a short affair with a few, and makes all of the husbands enraged. And then, disappears. This was a good puzzle and MacBeth makes a mistake solving it, earning a demotion.

At this point in the series MacBeth has been further developed as a character and has been a bit updated. He's still on the lazy side, still poaches fish and still loves Towser his mixed breed dog. He and others in the village are fun characters. ( )