Sergeant Hamish Macbeth pays no mind to a bothersome woman who had been out drinking and forgot all the events of the previous evening, until she turns up murdered.

After a dead body is found stuffed up a chimney and then lovable chimney sweep Pete Ray also ends up dead, it is up to Police Constable Hamish MacBeth to scour the Scottish Highlands to find out who is responsible for the dirty deeds.

"Sergeant Hamish Macbeth is alarmed to receive a report from a woman in the small village of Cronish in the Scottish Highlands. She has been brutally attacked and the criminal is on the loose. But upon further investigation, Hamish discovers that she was lying about the crime. So when the same woman calls him back about an intruder, he simply marvels at her compulsion to lie. This time, though, she is telling the truth. Her body is found in her home...

Lochdubh constable Hamish Macbeth's life is going to pot. He has-horrors!-been promoted, his new boss is a dunce, and a self-proclaimed traveler named Sean and his girlfriend have parked their rusty eyesore of a van in the middle of the village. Hamish smells trouble, and he's right, as usual. The doctor's drugs go missing. Money vanishes. Neighbors suddenly become unneighborly. The tension only explodes after the itinerant Sean is found brutally...

"When Police Sergeant Hamish Macbeth hears reports of a haunted castle near Drim, he assumes the eerie noises and lights reported by the villagers are just local teenagers going there to smoke pot or, worse, inject themselves with drugs. Still, Hamish decides that he and his policeman, Charlie "Clumsy" Carson, will spend the night at the ruined castle to get to the bottom of the rumors once and for all. There's no sign of any ghost...but then Charlie...

"Sergeant Hamish Macbeth--Scotland's most quick-witted but unambitious policeman--returns in M.C. Beaton's new mystery in her New York Times bestselling series. DEATH OF AN HONEST MAN Nobody loves an honest man, or that was what police sergeant Hamish Macbeth tried to tell newcomer Paul English. Paul had moved to a house in Cnothan, a sour village on Hamish's beat. He attended church in Lochdubh. He told the minister, Mr. Wellington, that his sermons...

Less than delighted when he wins the maid services of Mrs. Gillespie, a notorious and malicious gossip, in the local church raffle, Hamish Macbeth suddenly finds himself investigating the death of the local cleaning woman.

"Local police stations all over the Scottish Highlands are being threatened with closure. This presents the perfect opportunity for Detective Chief Inspector Blair, who would love nothing more than to get rid of Sergeant Hamish Macbeth. Blair suggests that Cyril Sessions, a keen young police officer, visit the town of Lochdubh to monitor exactly what Macbeth does every day. Macbeth hears about Blair's plan and is prepared to insure that Cyril returns...