Death of an Honest Man

Death of an Honest Man by M.C. Beaton            AudioBook: 5 hours, 23 minutes       Hardback Book:  256 pages            

I love the writing of M. C. Beaton and Hamish Macbeth is one of my all-time favorite literary characters.   The books in this series are a joy to read or listen to.   The rich Scot brogue is one of my favorite dialects and Beaton captures the mellifluous enunciations perfectly on the page or the audio version.  Love it.   In this story, Sergeant Hamish Macbeth meets up with this horrendously rude chap that has recently moved into one of the small village’s on Hamish’s beat.    The man, Paul English says he is an honest man and speaks nothing but the truth to people.    What he speaks is rude comments, said to hurt people’s feelings with attacks on their self-esteem.    One elderly lady in the village of Cnothan, who lives with her twin sister, has the habit of always repeating the last few words her sister says like an echo.   When Paul English experiences this in the ladies’ company he tells Jessie Currie (the repeater) that she needed psychiatric help.    He accused Hamish of dying his hair (it is a fiery red and natural).   He told the minister his sermons were boring.   He chats up some of the local ladies to the point of letting them think he is in love with them but before they hed to the altar he does his best to convince them to sign a document giving all their worldly goods to him at their death.   The ladies in question have a nice nest egg socked away and when they didn’t jump to his request immediately he would say awful things to them and tear away whatever belief they had in their own self-worth.   In other words, Paul English was a total jerk.   He had an on-going relationship with both a nurse who was hot to trot and a lady minister simultaneously.    He vowed his deep affection for both then started pushing the document giving over access to all of their bank accounts and assets to him upon their marriage.  He was a really mean-spirited fellow just vicious in his “honest” comments to people.   Then one day – he turns up dead.     Every one in the village had motive and everyone in the town he came from prior.  So who is responsible for the death of an “honest” man?    Good mystery, great plot, but my very favorite part of the story is that after Hamish had taken his pet wild cat to a reserve so she could go back to living free in the wild, Sonsie reappears!   I love Hamish’s pets Luggs the Dog and Sonsie.    When he released her in the reserve, I missed her as much as he and Luggs did.     This series is such fun to read.  I highly recommend it to everyone, young, old or in-between.    The characters are so colorful and real they all but step out of the pages.   Well done, M.C. Beaton.