M.C. Beaton and R. W. Green. Death of a Green-Eyed Monster. Grand Central, 2022. A Hamish Macbeth Mystery.

This is the thirty-fifth Hamish Macbeth mystery according to my librarian spouse. (Where do you think I get many of the books I review?) We note that Marion C. Beaton died in 2019. This may be the last of the series unless her estate does what Tom Clancy’s and other estates have done.

For readers of the series, even if you do not read the novel, read the introduction. It is written by Beaton’s co-author. He tells us how he got to know her and how he ended up co-authoring this novel. The book was largely her idea, but she was failing physically and could not write. He would take her ideas, write them up into a story, and then go over what he had with her until he got it right.

The title—Death of a Green-Eyed Monster—may be a bit misleading, but the “green-eyed monster” is, of course, jealousy, courtesy of Shakespeare’s Othello. In the play, jealousy is compared to a cat that toys with the prey that it has caught. There are some jealous characters in the story, but the murder victim in this story is almost a cipher. We known little about him. He is a rough-looking out of towner from Glasgow who is killed in what appears to be a gangland execution. He might be a monster, though.

Organized crime in Lochdubh? Alas, it looks that way.

Perhaps the most intriguing part of the tale, though, is that Hamish has been assigned a new constable. Readers of the stories know that constables at Lochdubh seems to last a year or two at most. At least three of them liked Lochdubh so much that when they were going to be transferred, they quit the force and got a job locally.

This constable is different. She is gorgeous. Hamish can only compare her to Priscilla Halburton-Smythe, except that Constable Dorothy MacIver has a warmer personality. People in Lochdubh at first suspect her as an outsider, but she slowly wins the hearts of most of the townspeople. She even gets the Currie sisters on her side.

There is one character in the story who is jealous of her, namely Sonsie, Hamish’s pet cat. There is then, a jealous yellow-eyed monster, but it is not a spoiler to admit that Sonsie does not die in the novel.

Dorothy caught sight of Sonsie in the rear-view mirror, yellow eyes radiating hostility. She shot the cat a look as cold as ice, noting with satisfaction a momentary flinch. Sonsie’s heart and mind might never be won, but the wild cat needed to know there was a new big cat on the block. (21)

There is plenty of the good-natured humor that is a hallmark of these stories. Even the nonfiction introduction reminds readers that the remote areas of Sutherland in Scotland, unlike the fictional Lochdubh, rarely have murders—maybe one a year in a bad year. It really is a safe place to go on vacation.

Unfortunately, to say much more about the story might involve some spoilers, but Hamish’s life goes in a surprising direction. Besides our murder victim, there are a couple of other people visiting in the area from Glasgow who seem suspicious. Then there is the tourist from Glencoe—Glencoe, Illinois, USA, that is—who seems a little slippery, though generous with buying rounds at the hotel bar.

Sergeant Inspector Blair, now in Glasgow, gets involved because the victim is a Glaswegian possibly connected to organized crime. I do not think we have ever seen Blair as obnoxious and even evil as he is in this case. He alienates nearly everyone and, as always, has it in for Macbeth. But we learn some secrets about him that make us like him even less.

Death of a Green-Eyed Monster has an interesting epilogue. If it were a Shakespeare play, it would have been presented as a dialogue between Priscilla and Elspeth, Hamish’s former fiancées. It is kind of a coda, perhaps making us readers think that this will be the last of the Hamish Macbeth stories. Mr. Green’s introduction suggests a possibility of more, but if not, this would be an appropriate place to end the series. After all, there are thirty-four other stories out there.