M. C. Beaton. Death of a Glutton. St. Martin’s, 1993.
_____. Death of a Poison Pen. Warner, 2004.

As many readers can guess from the author and titles, these are two Hamish Macbeth mysteries. Beaton takes two different approaches in telling these mysteries.

Death of a Glutton is an earlier Macbeth tale. It was number eight in the series. From the title we know who is going to be killed from nearly the first page. Peta Gore is an extreme overeater. She loves food and cannot get enough. And her manners are gross. From the title we know she is going to get knocked off, but it does not happen until about halfway through the book.

This is at its heart a closed room mystery. In this case Maria Worth runs a upper-class dating agency. Peta is her wealthy silent partner. However, recently Peta has invited herself on the service’s excursions, and her manners have ruined the gatherings. Maria decides to secretly take a group to an obscure location to avoid Peta. She chooses the Tommel Castle Hotel in Lochdubh.

So we meet the eight clients on this trip, four men and four women, all sufficiently wealthy and all single. Peta somehow finds out about the trip and shows up in Lochdubh after all. So half the book shows how she offends every one of those eight customers, Maria, and the hotel’s cook. By the time she is killed—in a manner appropriate for a glutton—there are many suspects.

Hamish, of course, will have to solve the mystery with the usual collection of human obstacles like ex-fiancée Priscilla, who is back in town to help out at the hotel run by her father and, of course, Inspector Blair, Hamish’s superior from Strathbane who is looking for a way to discredit Hamish. The caricatures in this one make it a lot of fun.

One interesting detail from this episode: we briefly meet Willie Lamont for the first time. He will become a regular in the Macbeth stories as he marries the daughter of the owner of the Italian restaurant in town, but that happens much later.

Death of a Poison Pen, twentieth in the series, is different. Two murders happen as the story begins. Blair ends up being a problem here as well. He wants to write off the first as a suicide, but Hamish explains how the facts do not measure up. The medical examiner’s discovery of drugs in the victim’s body vindicates Hamish and irritates Blair. The murders and much of the action take place in nearby Braikie rather than Lochdubh.

Someone has been sending poison pen letters to many of the people in Braikie. Indeed, one of those letters was found with the body of the popular postmistress. Hamish has collected many of the letters. Most of the letters are lies but they carry insinuations that might affect people’s reputations.

Soon after, a second woman in town is stabbed to death in bed. Clearly this is no suicide. It turns out the victim was the author of those nasty letters. And then when the senior center in town is having a movie night, someone send the center a video tape of the first victim in her death throes.

This is a very different kind of investigation. It includes many of the people in town from the teachers in the local school, boys who spend too much time on the street, and nearly everyone else. After all, everyone in town knew the teacher and the postmistress. Who had grudges against them? While the teacher was pretty heavy-handed, everyone seems to have liked the postmistress. Were the murders even related, or was it just a coincidence that a letter written by victim #2 was found next to victim #1?

There are a couple of enjoyable subplots. News reporter Elspeth is assigned a very ambitious intern to tutor, but Mallone wants all the glory to himself so he can get a job with a big-city paper. Priscilla’s London roommate Jenny Ogilve has heard so much about Hamish, Priscilla’s ex-fiancé, that she decides to take a vacation to Lochdubh to meet this interesting character. Let’s just say that it gets complicated.

In this mystery Hamish has Lugs. In the earlier one, his dog was still Towser. Sonsie was not yet part of the picture in either. Both are entertaining stories as much as they are mysteries.

I have to mention a discovery I made. I was curious about other Hamish Macbeth titles I had not read so I did a web search. I found an absolutely compulsive web site that lists all the books in hundreds of book series from Sherlock Holmes to Alex Cross. It is called Book Series in Order. It has them all, including Hamish. I had to check out Sherlock Holmes and Tarzan and others by Burroughs like John Carter of Mars.

Without a doubt in my mind, the series with the most books is the Hardy Boys. They have been cranking them out, several a year, since 1927. I wondered how Hamish could live through all the changes of seasons described in his books and still only be in his thirties. But one really has to ask how Frank and Joe Hardy could have solved over 500 mysteries (some with Tom Swift, others with Nancy Drew) and still be boys! Anyway, to have some fun, check out the lists at Book Series in Order.