Death of a Cad (Hamish Macbeth Mysteries, No. 2)
by M. C. Beaton
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Book Summary Information
Author: M. C. BeatonEdition: Mass Market Paperback
Audio: English (Original Language); English (Unknown); English (Published)
Published: 2004-07-01
ISBN: 0446607142
Number of pages: 224
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Book Reviews of Death of a Cad (Hamish Macbeth Mysteries, No. 2)
Book Review: Could a champion huntsman have shot himself through carelessness?
Summary: 4 Stars
M. C. Beaton is one of perhaps a dozen pseudonyms of Marion Chesney (Mrs. Harry Scott) (1936 - ) a writer born in Glasgow now living in England. Writing as M. C. Beaton, she has produced at least 42 detective novels: 18 about Agatha Raisin and 24 in the Hamish Macbeth series. DEATH OF A CAD is the second novel about Constable Hamish Macbeth of the northwest Scottish sea loch town of Lochdubh. This book is notably more complex and deeper than its predecessor in the series, DEATH OF A GOSSIP. Better detective yarn, better novel.
But DEATH OF A CAD does retain earlier formulaic elements. These include first chapter fingering for the reader of the person to be murdered (the Gossip, Cad, Outsider, Hussy, etc.), intrusion for a short time of the future victim into a group of a half dozen or a dozen persons in or near the village of Lochdubh, with the future dead person having already given or being about to give all or most of the group ample reason to want to kill him or her.
Thirty-something Hamish Macbeth solved his first murder case a year earlier (DEATH OF GOSSIP) but had made sure that a police higher up was given the credit so that Hamish would not be promoted from his comfortable, undemanding job. This sinecure gives him ample opportunities to poach fish and game and earn money on the side to support a brood of much younger brothers and sisters who depend on his remittances.
The novel's cad is quickly and unmistakably identified. He is Captain Peter Bartlett of the Highland Dragoons. He is already on hand as an early if not entirely welcome house guest of Colonel and Mrs Halburton-Smythe of Tommel Castle. The time is a couple of days before August 12th, "the Glorious Twelfth," first day of the annual four month grouse shooting season in the Highlands. The Halburton-Smythes have invited a few friends, acquaintances and relatives, young and old, to spend some days under their roof and celebrate the engagement of their daughter Priscilla to a suddenly famous nearly 40 years old playwright, Henry Withering.
For years Henry had cranked out serious Marxist plays and made himself beloved of radicals and communists. Suddenly from nowhere has sprung DUCHESS DARLING, a frothy comedy of upper class manners, and made the playwright an overnight celebrity. How on earth could he have done such an artistic flip flop and deliberately nosedived into the world of lowbrow literature?
The always in debt Captain Bartlett makes a bet of 5,000 pounds with immensely wealthy Jeremy Pomfret from Perth that he will shoot two grouse before Jeremy does. The Captain also informs Constable Macbeth the evening before that he will be paid another 2,000 pounds if he delivers his brace of grouse before noon of the Glorious Twelfth to a wealthy Arab who will send a helicopter to fetch them to London for an evening celebration. The two competitors are to set out together at 9:00 a.m.
But Bartlett cheats and slips out early, apparently unnoticed by anyone and is later found dead hanging on a fence, shot through the chest with both barrels of his shotgun. It seems an accident. But Constable Macbeth is suspicious and fairly soon produces evidence and leads which compel the killer to confess at novel's end. Meanwhile the killer has also murdered one of three female house guests with whom the randy Captain had slept one after the other in the night before the grouse hunt.
If you read DEATH OF A CAD too quickly, you can miss vital clues. But either a slower first reading or a more attentive re-reading shows that author Beaton has written a more reader-fair detective story this second time around. For we do not have to depend on Hamish Macbeth's uncanny and unreproducible sleuthing instincts so much as in DEATH OF A GOSSIP. The clues are fairly if unobtrusively laid out and readers will legitimately enjoy piecing them together.
In addition, DEATH OF A CAD provides the same wonderful feel for Scottish landscapes, sea views, weather, roads, Highland characters and social tensions as in DEATH OF A GOSSIP. The text becomes lightly didactic about grouse hunting and the care and cleaning of expensive shotguns.
The ultimate clue to unraveling the mystery comes when Hamish travels to London, interviews the deceased's aunt and learns more of the murdered Captain's psychology. He "had a magpie mind. He was always adopting other people's enthusiasms and hobbies" (Ch. 14). It turns out that one of those enthusiasms got him killed. -OOO-
Summary of Death of a Cad (Hamish Macbeth Mysteries, No. 2)
A Constable Hamish Macbeth Mystery. When Priscilla Halburton-Smythe brings her London playwright fiance home to Lochdubh, the whole town is delighted -- save perhaps for love-smitten bobby Hamish Macbeth. But the morning after a posh engagement party, one of the guests, Captain Bartlett, is murdered on a grouse hunt.Unfortunately, the prime suspects are the party guests. And a second murder soon follows the first. Now Hamish Macbeth must cut through the alibis before the killer strikes again . . . all the while trying to woo the lovely Priscilla from her jealous boyfriend.British Detectives Books
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