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Hamish Macbeth #3

Death of an Outsider

m.c. beaton shaun grindell

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The most hated man in the most dour town in Scotland is sleeping with the fishes, or-more accurately-dumped into a tank filled with crustaceans. All that remain of the murdered victim are his bones. But after the lobsters are shipped off to Britain's best restaurants, the whole affair quickly lands on the plate of Constable Hamish Macbeth.

Exiled with his dog, Towser, to the dreary outpost of Cnothan, Macbeth sorely misses his beloved Lochdubh, his formerly beloved Priscilla Halburton-Smythe, and his days of doing nothing but staring at the sheep grazing in a nearby croft. Now the lawman has to contend with a detective chief inspector who wants the modus operandi hushed up, a dark-haired lass who has an ulterior motive to seduce him, and a killer who has made mincemeat of his victim-and without doubt will strike again . . .

194 pages, Mass Market Paperback

First published January 1,1988
Series
Hamish Macbeth
Places
scotland, lochdubh scotland, 

This edition

Format
194 pages, Mass Market Paperback
Published
July 1, 2005 by Warner Books
ISBN
9780446614726
ASIN
0446614726
Language
English
Characters More characters

More editions

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, 100 votes)
5 stars
43(43%)
4 stars
37(37%)
3 stars
20(20%)
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100 reviews All reviews
Profile Image for Kimberly .
Rin_simps
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
April 26,2025
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Poor Hamish MacBeth hasn't got a lick of sense when it comes to women. Other than that, this is a wonderful tale that's slightly darker than the first several of the series. Several characters return, and some new ones definitely test Hamish's patience and moral fortitude.

Another satisfying whodunit set in the Scottish Highlands that I enjoyed very much.
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Camyy
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
April 26,2025
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Hamish Macbeth, local policeman and mystery-solver extraordinaire, is seconded to a nearby town to run the police station while its usual inspector is away. Faced with an unfriendly and taciturn population, Hamish struggles to win the trust of the townsfolk when the local rich landowner is found dead and Hamish doggedly pursues the murderer. I like this humourous series; Hamish is quietly brilliant and one can't help but like him.
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Domsa
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
April 26,2025
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Plaisant et charmant, mais pas au point d'avoir envie de lire les autres livres de l'auteur.
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UnknownxDark
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
April 26,2025
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3.5 stars Good cozy though with some hiccups :). Hamish has some ideas about women that just didn’t withstand the time test. The mystery was good, the detective inspector overbearing as always and Hamish silently saves the day.
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tokiyuh
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
April 26,2025
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Hamish is exiled to Cnothan to backfill a constable that is going on vacation. When a skeleton is found in the middle of the circle of standing stones near the town, Hamish must find out - who it is and what happened. Unfortunately, the villagers don't take to outsiders very well.

I listened to a audio book of this and the reader was very good at reading this mystery. Lot of twists and turns and suspects as it turns out the murdered man is also an outsider to the town.

I didn't realize that I read this out of order so perhaps this is why I didn't enjoy it as much as the previous one. I will go back and read the previous book and see if that makes a difference. I will also read on because I do like the character.
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redbubbles29
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
April 26,2025
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They went and switched narrators, but Shaun Grindell was just as good, maybe better, than Antony Ferguson. This story was grisly compared to Death of a Cad, which is why I didn't rate it as high.
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jiji7878
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
April 26,2025
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A another good book in Hamish Macbeth series. Hamish is take out of his usual place of work Lochdubh and moved Cnothen for three month. You can guarantee that everything that can go wrong will go wrong for Hamish. A really great book to listen to.
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