Where to Start with M.C. Beaton’s Hamish MacBeth Mysteries
Marion Chesney has won international acclaim for her suspenseful yet cozy mystery stories. Don’t know the name? She has written under many aliases, including M.C. Beaton. Among Beaton’s best-loved creations is Constable Hamish MacBeth, a Scottish investigator charged with protecting the citizens of quaint but isolated (and murder-prone) Lochdubh. As far as detectives go, MacBeth is a little strange, and his talent for solving tough crimes has not translated to solving the mystery of maintaining a successful relationship. But don’t hold that against him: he (with occasional help from his beloved pets) never fails to get the job done. This popular series even inspired a TV show, Hamish MacBeth, that ran from 1995 to 1997.
With so much material to choose from, it is easy for newcomers to feel a bit lost. Which of the nearly three dozen Hamish MacBeth cozy mysteries should you start with? The very best are listed below, starting with the greatest. These five books received the highest Goodreads ratings out of all the books in the series, so you can be sure they contain the most challenging, most exciting, and most dangerous cases of Constable MacBeth’s long and storied career.
Death of a Village, the eighteenth installment in the series, finds Constable MacBeth investigating a crime committed not against one person but against the entire village of Stoyre. But what is this crime that has the villagers running for their lives and terrified out of their wits? What, if anything, does it have to do with a local church bombing and a World War I ship that sunk nearby? With mysteries—and the death toll—stacking up, MacBeth had better sort it out quickly, before Stoyre becomes a ghost town.
Crystal French is not one to let bygones be bygones. So when Hamish MacBeth ends up on her bad side just for doing his job, French, a reckless TV reporter, is determined to get revenge. She does so by plastering Lochdubh's secrets all over the airwaves. But spilling secrets is a dangerous gambit, especially in a town with as many as Lochdubh: at least one of those secrets incurs the wrath of more than just MacBeth. When French is found murdered, our dogged, red-headed constable must shine a spotlight on the killer before he strikes again.
No one is sorry when Fergus Macleod, a dustman ("sanitation worker" in American parlance) and newly-appointed head of the town recycling center, is found dead. He was murdered, of course, but no one is particularly inclined to help MacBeth get to the bottom of things. The case grows even more urgent when a second murder occurs. Surrounded by a tight-lipped town and an ever-growing list of suspects, MacBeth faces a lonely, slightly smelly uphill battle to find the truth in Death of a Dustman, the sixteenth book in the series.
Crystal French is not one to let bygones be bygones. So when Hamish MacBeth ends up on her bad side just for doing his job, French, a reckless TV reporter, is determined to get revenge. She does so by plastering Lochdubh's secrets all over the airwaves. But spilling secrets is a dangerous gambit, especially in a town with as many as Lochdubh: at least one of those secrets incurs the wrath of more than just MacBeth. When French is found murdered, our dogged, red-headed constable must shine a spotlight on the killer before he strikes again.
MacBeth is used to dealing with unusual people, but Effie Garrard may take the cake. A newcomer to Lochdubh, she always seems to have her head in the clouds. Among other things, she is absolutely convinced that Jock Fleming, a local painter popular with the ladies, is her fiance. The dream comes to a grisly end when Effie is poisoned to death. Who would hate Effie enough to kill her? Is there any significance to the fact that she was killed with hemlock? It is, of course, up to Constable MacBeth to sort things out before anyone else gets hurt.
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Eileen Gonzalez is a freelance writer from Connecticut. She has a Master’s degree in communications and years of experience writing about pop culture. She contributes to Book Riot and Foreword Reviews, and she occasionally tweets at @eileen2thestars.