Review: Death of a Poison Pen

Hamish's troubles with women continue. Jenny Ogilvie, one of Priscilla's friends, has come north to Lochdubh to try and seduce Hamish. Her inroad is Hamish's latest case- the double murder of the postmistress and former schoolmistress, who had been sending poison pen letters around the village. Finding someone who would want to murder both women proves to be a difficult task for Hamish.

One thing that strikes me about all the books in this series, but particularly this one, is that everyone seems to exist outside the present time. Though the books are presumably set in the early twenty-first century, people seem to have the sensibilities of the 1950s. I realize that Lochdubh is supposed to be in the far corners of the Highlands, but the people just don't seem to fit with the time period. Rural or not, they can't really be decades behind the times, can they?

M.C. Beaton, Death of a Poison Pen (Mysterious Press, 2004) ISBN: 0892967889