DEATH OF A GOSSIP

The setting is the Scottish Highlands, the detective is laid-back village constable Hamish MacBeth—and those are, alas, just about the only pluses in this awkwardly written mystery. The murder victim: Lady Jane Winters, a bullying gossip columnist who's attending the local fishing school (this is salmon and trout country)—and loudly broadcasts the fact that she knows something hidden and unsavory about each of her fellow students. So, after Lady Jane turns up dead in a fishing pool, strangled with casting line, officious Inspector Blair can find motives for all the class members: wimpy secretary Alice Wilson, who's out to snare smarmy lawyer Jeremy Blythe. . . who has his eye on heiress Daphne Gore, who. . . well, you get the idea. But it's slow-moving, red-haired Hamish, of course, who nails down the culprit—in a resolution that's as ponderous as amiable Hamish himself. Clumsily plotted, overall, and told with an amateur air.