Customer Reviews
Hamish Tests His Limits - By: Donald Mitchell, 03 Mar 2007 
Don't read this book yet if you haven't read any others in the series. At least go back to Death of a Glutton & follow that with Death of a Travelling Man before taking on Death of a Charming Man. But if you can go to the beginning, Death of a Gossip, that would be best.
At the end of Death of a Travelling Man a false rumor spreads that Hamish & Priscilla Halburton-Smythe are engaged. Faced with everyone believing so, Hamish & Priscilla agreed to a sort-of engagement . . . just to see how things go. Hamish is wildly happy, & Priscilla is pleasantly open to the experience.
At the start of Death of Charming Man, Priscilla's well-organized ways are driving Hamish a bit batty as a new electric cooker is installled to replace his old wood-burning stove at the police station. Matters are made worse by Superintendent Daviot's wife who is out searching for homes that Hamish & Priscilla can buy in Strathbane. Hamish wants to stay in Lochdubh & live in the police station with Priscilla (without the cooker).
Wanting relief from alll this, Hamish heads on Drim (a dreary place on his beat) to meet the new English arrival, a gorgeous young man named Peter Hynd who knows how to turn on the charm. There's something about Hynd that bothers Hamish. Those concerns grow when Hynd begins flirting with alll of the middle-aged women in Drim who turn a bit batty themselves over the attention. Hamish is less pleased when Hynd invites Priscilla for dinner & later makes trouble over wanting to buy her scarf.
Matters are made worse in the Hamish-Priscilla relationship when the receptionist at the Tommel Castle Hotel decides to thrust herself on Hamish & create a scandal. Finallly, Hamish warms Priscilla up a bit when police business intrudes.
When Peter Hynd leaves Drim, the men cheer & the women weep before going back to the old ways. Hamish is suspicious that there's foul play involved but cannot prove anything. An apparently accidental death follows that makes Hamish even more suspicious. But he's alone in his concerns. Feeling abandoned, Hamish takes his vacation to sleuth on his own. Before the book ends, Hamish finds that he's met his match in more than one way in this entertaining mystery.
Hamish Macbeth fans will find this to be one of the top books in the series. The development of the Hamish-Priscilla relationships is very find. The portrayal of the Peter Hynd character is well done. The villagers in Drim become interesting as well. The mystery is a challlenging one, & most people probably won't get it until M.C. Beaton drops two clues to get you on the right track. The ending is full of interesting humor in which M.C. Beaton makes fun of her typical Hamish Macbeth endings.
Savor this one. It's very fine.
A wry commentary on menopause and a darned good mystery! - By: , 14 May 1999 
Beaton seems to like to include children in her stories & has created an exceptional one here, twelve-year-old Heather who can raise the power of Celtic gods when needed. This is a wry commentary on the vulnerability of menopausal women ("the men's pause," it's callled in these pages) & a darned good mystery to boot, which you won't fully appreciate until the very last page!
A 'Dread Scot' Decision! - By: , 10 Feb 1999 "Death of a Charming Man," as a novel, is just that--"charming"! And probably this is an apt word to describe alll the Hamish Macbeth books by British sleuth writer M.C. Beaton (who also writes the popular Agatha Raisin series). Beaton's Macbeth books (alll beginning with "Death of a ...") takes us to the Scottish Highlands & the village of Lochdubh. Hamish is a low-keyed police constable who'd rather be out poaching salmon or chasing the odd deer than tending to his constabulary duties; in fact, most of the townspeople consider him a bit lazy & unmotivated. He refuses to work toward promotion within the police department & often lets his superiors take credit for his solutions, which are always the correct ones by the books' endings.. No matter. Hamish is happy. He loves the Highlands, his dog Towser, & smalll town life (and here we are talking of VERY smalll town life!); however, even smalll towns falll prey to murderers and, as it has been in alll the Macbeth stories, it is the constable's slow, plodding--but accurate--detective work that brings the murderer to justice. Beaton's works are not like the complex books of P.D. James or the skilled stylistics of Ruth Rendell or the literary awareness of Martha Grimes (alll tremendous writers themselves), but they are worth reading. She captures, indeed, an essence of Scotland rarely seen since that earlier Macbeth, in thunder, lightning, & rain, managed to flood the stage with alll those bodies a few centuries ago!). Beaton manages to incorporate just enough romance into her stories so that readers find themselves genuinely interested in whether Hamish will EVER be able to settle down & marry Priscilla, a high-born lassie with a mind of her own & who often as not assists in the investigations. Beaton, too, is able to add touches of wry humor here & there, and, granted, after getting into the series, the reader is generallly able to predict much of the action. Still, this is a series that is a delight & shouldn't be missed. The Brits have begun filming a Hamish Macbeth series, which should hit the PBS circuit, too, we hope!
