Tuesday, March 18, 2014

Review: Death of Yesterday (Hamish Macbeth, #29)


Although I seem to be in a minority in this opinion, I like the direction that Beaton is taking this series. It's moving towards longer mysteries, that is, those that take more than a week to solve. These aren't necessarily "closed" mysteries, the way the earlier ones in the series were- they don't involve a specific group of suspects in a particular location, such as guests at a hotel. I appreciate that some signs of modern technology have entered Lochdubh. At least now characters have laptops and mobile phones. The total isolation was skirting the boundaries of the absurd.

In this case Hamish investigates a woman's claim of rape, only to find her body turn up weeks later. Investigating the case takes him to the continent and back. I'm not entirely sure why this book is called Death of Yesterday. I can come up with a few very tangential metaphorical possibilities, but usually the titles in this series are obvious. I'm getting sick of Hamish's women problems. Really, Beaton needs to to do something about this. I'm sick of watching Hamish treat women badly and then whine about being single. There needs to be movement on this front! The mysteries in this series have developed, but Hamish's personal life has not.

M.C. Beaton, Death of Yesterday (Grand Central, 2013) ISBN: 145552252X 

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