Most newcomers don't stay long in remote Lochdubh. They arrive filled with romantic notions of life in northern Scotland until boredom, dampness, and nosy villagers send them running back to civilization. Hamish Macbeth is surprised when artist Effie Garrard sticks it out through the winter, especially since her cottage is so far up in the hills that it might take weeks before anyone would know if something happened to her. By spring Macbeth fears something has. He takes his Land Rover out to check on her, and for once his uncanny sixth sense is wrong. Effie is fine - if being a dreamer and a little odd don't count. That problem off his mind, Macbeth's attention turns closer to home. His old flame Priscilla Halburton-Smythe has returned to Lochdubh for a long visit, not that Macbeth still cares. And a landscape painter, up from Glasgow, is charming all the ladies in the area, including the elderly twins Nessie and Jessie Currie. Macbeth's famous intuition tells him trouble is in the air. And this time Macbeth is spot-on. Effie Garrard is found dead, an apparent suicide. Although his superiors close the case, Macbeth feels in his bones it is murder. Worse, things begin to go haywire in his own life. Another of his old girlfriends turns up in Lochdubh, his heart is being tugged toward an unwise passion, and he may be dreaming too much himself. Distracted by his personal affairs, Macbeth may not see an evil that's getting too close to him...or a ruthless killer whose violence will give everyone nightmares. *Starred Review* A wine bottle loaded with antifreeze. A Scottish dance party interrupted by obsessive jealousy. A Brigadoon -like setting in northern Scotland that quickly turns Hitchcockian. Beaton is a masterful mixer of disparate elements that result in crime novels that are part police procedural and part psychological thriller. In this, the twenty-first in the Hamish Macbeth series, Beaton positions the stolid Constable Macbeth, sole lawman in the tiny village of Lochdubh in the Highlands, at the end of a winter marked by a series of spectacular blizzards. Macbeth is certain that the newcomer to the village, Effie Garrard, an artist under the influence of the usual romantic baggage about life in the Highlands, will have long abandoned her isolated cottage. But Effie seems to be in fine fettle, even talking about another newcomer artist falling in love with her. Then spring arrives, and Effie is found dead on a hillside. Macbeth's higher-ups rule the death a suicide, but he is bothered by the scene of the crime and the psychology behind the woman's death. A clear-cut case of murder follows, with Macbeth trying to discover a connection between the two. While the plotting itself is intricate and absorbing, Beaton, a Scot herself, excels at giving readers a taste of Highland life and creating a believable character in the lonely, brilliant, continually frustrated-in-love Macbeth. A treat. Connie Fletcher Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved Used Book in Good Condition