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Hamish Macbeth #1

Death of a Gossip

m.c. beaton

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Scottish highland village cop Hamish Macbeth must find which target was provoked enough to strangle and drown nasty fat widowed tabloid reporter Jane Winters, who revealed many others' guilty secrets.

Much is from the viewpoint of a naive secretary seduced by a blue-blood playboy. Icy blond beauty, aristocratic Priscilla Halburton-Smythe, lends a hand.

179 pages, Paperback

First published January 1,1985
Series
Hamish Macbeth

This edition

Format
179 pages, Paperback
Published
February 1, 1999 by Warner Books
ISBN
9780446607131
ASIN
0446607134
Language
English
Characters More characters

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About the author

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m.c. beaton

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Marion Chesney Gibbons
aka: Ann Fairfax, Jennie Tremaine, Helen Crampton, Marion Chesney, Charlotte Ward, Sarah Chester.

Marion Chesney was born on 1936 in Glasgow, Scotland, UK, and started her first job as a bookseller in charge of the fiction department in John Smith & Sons Ltd. While bookselling, by chance, she got an offer from the Scottish Daily Mail to review variety shows and quickly rose to be their theatre critic. She left Smith's to join Scottish Field magazine as a secretary in the advertising department, without any shorthand or typing, but quickly got the job of fashion editor instead. She then moved to the Scottish Daily Express where she reported mostly on crime. This was followed by a move to Fleet Street to the Daily Express where she became chief woman reporter. After marrying Harry Scott Gibbons and having a son, Charles, Marion went to the United States where Harry had been offered the job of editor of the Oyster Bay Guardian. When that didn't work out, they went to Virginia and Marion worked as a waitress in a greasy spoon on the Jefferson Davies in Alexandria while Harry washed the dishes. Both then got jobs on Rupert Murdoch's new tabloid, The Star, and moved to New York.

Anxious to spend more time at home with her small son, Marion, urged by her husband, started to write historical romances in 1977. After she had written over 100 of them under her maiden name, Marion Chesney, and under the pseudonyms: Ann Fairfax, Jennie Tremaine, Helen Crampton, Charlotte Ward, and Sarah Chester, she getting fed up with 1714 to 1910, she began to write detectives stories in 1985 under the pseudonym of M. C. Beaton. On a trip from the States to Sutherland on holiday, a course at a fishing school inspired the first Constable Hamish Macbeth story. They returned to Britain and bought a croft house and croft in Sutherland where Harry reared a flock of black sheep. But Charles was at school, in London so when he finished and both tired of the long commute to the north of Scotland, they moved to the Cotswolds where Agatha Raisin was created.

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Community Reviews

Rating(4.2 / 5.0, 99 votes)
5 stars
44(44%)
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29(29%)
3 stars
26(26%)
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99 reviews All reviews
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ColorMeHappy
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
April 26,2025
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Ultimately feeling a bit meh on this one--would give the next book in the series a try. I wanted more of Hamish! The audio version with all the accents was great for listening.

Content warnings: some open-door moments one that was unpleasant--slimy aspiring politician and naive young woman who thinks he's going to marry her, though he's stringing several women along, it was just so very cringe
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Flame_Zrfn
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
April 26,2025
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The first Hamish Macbeth mystery and a fun read. A disparate group of people come to the Highlands for a fishing holiday; one woman is nasty, brutish, and mean to everyone and (shockingly) she winds up dead. No one cries. Hamish Macbeth solves the mystery, despite being dismissed as a rural, not-too-bright constable. Key structural elements and plotting show Christie’s influence on M.C. Beaton, and overall, it’s an entertaining weekend read. I’ll definitely look for more in this series.
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Rob7
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
April 26,2025
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So very quick read! Agatha type mystery and maybe be a detective who will show up to the big shoes of the name! Murder of a reporter of tabloids! Wow it’s funny that anyone cares! I will read a few more of this series before I really give a big review!
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Draco-Oblivion
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
April 26,2025
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Autre série de M.C. Beaton. C'est léger, ça se lit facilement, et cette fois, l'action se déroule dans les Highlands, en Écosse.
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tsumetai1163
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
April 26,2025
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Fantastic! What a story, so intelligently told! The difference between Death Of A Gossip and the first Agatha Raisin book is that the former doesn't concentrate on the main character's details. That only helped to improve on what was a nice murder case. The gathering of suspects in a library was something of a throwback to Christie books. The final showdown with the suspects was very well presented. Hamish is such a decent chap. His traits are realistically displayed, and you believe him, his upbringing, his motives. He is the most alive detective I've come across since Sleeping Murder's Jane Marple. I enjoyed reading about things that moved me. Yet despite the fact that I could have been swept away emotionally, I wasn't. The book gave me control of my thoughts. I was aloof and impartial, while still cared very much for Alice, Charlie et al. I was very surprised by the quality of this book. And it seems, and I hope, that I have a lot of good things to discover of the Hamish Macbeth series.
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Musdamag
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
April 26,2025
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I must admit that M.C. Beaton is growing on me. I like this very first Hamish Macbeth mystery.

A group of vacationers have gone to MacBeth's village in the Highlands of Scotland to learn how to fish. They're a fairly innocuous group it seems, with the exception of one odious individual. Lady Jane has managed to make herself hated almost from the get go. Every single thing she says is calculated to make the others feel small and stupid and to provoke them into a state of angry humiliation.

It gets worse. Apparently Lady Jane has done her research and has found out unsavory details on each of them. She delights in letting them all know just to watch them squirm and become frightened. Apparently the sense of power gives her an adrenaline rush and she thrives off of it.

Which of this group is going to be murdered isn't so much of a mystery as when someone was finally going to bump the malicious witch off.

Someone finally does and Hamish MacBeth is determined to find out who. But first he must find out who Lady Jane really was, how she acquired her information and why as well as uncover the dark secrets of each member of the fishing party.
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Mcgillacuddy
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
April 26,2025
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Decentish introduction to village bobby Hamish Macbeth. For such a short book there were a stack of stereotypical suspects. Cozy.
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menkers
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
April 26,2025
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This was my first Hamish Macbeth novel, and I found it enjoyable. It reminded me a bit of the Rhys Bowen Constable Evans books - a small town constable who beats the detectives at their own game.
This book was a bit lighter in tone than Bowen's books, but a fun read nontheless.
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