DEATH OF A NAG

A broken engagement (has he truly finished with Priscilla Halburton-Smythe?) and a demotion from sergeant to constable have lowered the usually cheerful spirits of Hamish Macbeth, the entire police force of Lochdubh village in Scotland (Death of a Charming Man, 1994, etc.). For this 11th outing, he decides to cheer himself up by spending overdue vacation time in the seaside town of Skag, settling, with dog Towser, into a very modest boardinghouse on the beach. The food is terrible, and the other guests are unprepossessing: nasty Bob Harris and dispirited wife Doris, who's the chief target of Bob's verbal abuse; spinsterish retired teacher Miss Gunnery; June and Dermott Brett with their three children; retired military man Andrew Biggar; and Tracey and Cheryl, a pair of tough-talking, heavily made-up twentysomethings from Glasgow. It's a dreary, boring scene for Hamish until, walking on the town pier one day, he spots the body of Bob Harris in the water — drowned after a blow to the head. Within days, there's another killing, and the local police ask Hamish to help. There are prime suspects among his fellow guests, none of whom are quite what they seem. But imaginative sleuthing and Hamish's on-target intuition again provide the neat solution, and our hero returns thankfully to Lochdubh, serene again despite an unexpected loss of his own. One of the better outings in this comfy-as-an-old-shoe series.