Mystery of the body in the loch

THE highly prolific MC Beaton having passed on, the task of chronicling the adventures of her Highland policeman Hamish Macbeth has fallen to her “fellow journalist and long-time friend”, Surrey-based RW Green. Green confides in the foreword to this, his second Macbeth novel, that Beaton kept no notes about her characters – they were all in her head – but that before her death they spent many hours collaborating and discussing plot ideas, so he was well prepared to take on the role.

Since my own experience of Hamish Macbeth is limited to the Robert Carlyle-starring TV adaptation of the 1990s, which Beaton loathed, it’s hard to be sure just how seamlessly Green’s version follows on from hers, but it has all the hallmarks of a faithful, affectionate continuation by an author who wants to put his own stamp on a series without straying too far from a winning, beloved formula.

The concept of Macbeth as a laid-back (though some call him lazy) neighbourhood copper who loves the sleepy Sutherland village of Lochdubh, and wouldn’t do anything that might get him promoted or transferred elsewhere, is an appealing one, as is the notion that he will always do what he thinks is best for the locals, even if that means interpreting the letter of the law somewhat loosely. And it’s the latter that has him skating on thin ice in this story.

Incomer Kate Hibbert has been living in Lochdubh for a year, and hasn’t made herself overly popular, so when she disappears from the village, suitcase in hand, no-one is particularly distressed. It’s only when Diane Spears comes up from Edinburgh asking what is being done to locate her missing cousin, and a decomposing body is washed up on the shore of a nearby loch, along with a suitcase, that Hamish realises he’s got a murder on his hands.

Hamish is well known for bending the rules, but what he does next is genuinely surprising. The inner lining of Hibbert’s suitcase has rotted away in the loch, revealing a package she’s obviously taken care to conceal. Hamish takes the package away with him, and tells no-one of its existence, determined to carry out his own investigation independently of the despised DCI Blair and his team from Strathbane. His reasoning is that if it has no connection to the murder then spiriting it away is no loss, but if it incriminates any of the locals he wants to be the first to know so he can decide how to deal with it.

So while Blair, a man Macbeth has good reason to hate and distrust, is in overall charge, Hamish carries out his own enquiries in Lochdubh, where he uncovers information about Kate Hibbert that sheds light on why someone might want to kill her.

Green takes in his stride the history that’s been built up over more than 30 Beaton books, incorporating old characters and situations into his own interpretation with apparent ease. And if he isn’t above lapsing into romanticised nonsense like “She was a Highlander, and had the Highlanders’ unerring ability to recognise when they are not hearing the truth”, for the most part he does appear to be resisting the temptation to oversentimentalise Lochdubh, and there are a couple of points when gruesome and creepy imagery is juxtaposed effectively against the cosy backdrop.

Long-term readers feel that Green has brought a darker edge to the place, but Lochdubh retains its essential cosiness: a lovely place to visit, though it might take a few generations to become accepted there.