Death of a Spy by MC Beaton (with RW Green)

Death of a Spy

by MC Beanton (with RW Green)

Constable 2024

Next year marks the fortieth since Hamish Macbeth first mooched into the crime section, thoughtfully scratching an armpit and wondering who to squeeze to get a free cup of coffee round here. As neighbours, ex-flames, superiors and his own paperwork will tell you, the man is a loafing scrounger (in Scots, a slinge). Yet Constable Hamish has averaged one cracked case a year since 1985, all from the unlikely confines of Lochdubh. A fictional village in the northern Scottish Highlands, Lochdubh exhibits the cheerful indifference to wider-world matters expected of remote populations, and over the decades this natural resistance has hardened into full-blown immunity. Where occasional beacons of the eighties zeitgeist (Thatcher, AIDS, yuppies) would wink across the pages of early novels, it is noticeable that word of recent developments (a Scottish independence referendum, a global pandemic) is yet to reach Lochdubh. And by far the most considerable real-world happening for the series to circumnavigate is the passing of its creator, M. C. Beaton.

This 36th entry, Death of a Spy, is also the 3rd to be written solely by R. W. Green, who is conducting the afterlives of Beaton’s two best-known creations, Hamish Macbeth and Agatha Raisin. This time, Hamish confronts local crises - a bridge collapse, a spate of robberies - while hunting an international spy ring, adding a sprinkle of John Buchan to the usual Beaton fare. As is often the case with legacy fiction, the end product is a little uncanny.

Green’s undertaking is to reanimate rather than invent; the wax having set on Hamish and his world, the author’s job is to arrange the figures and heirlooms as deferentially as possible. This explains Lochdubh’s magical insulation from events occurring after Beaton’s passing, as such events would have transformed the town beyond its founder’s vision. Milder symptoms of today are permitted; Hamish has an iPad, despite being the same age as when he used a typewriter.

Green’s attempted seamless transition is betrayed by slighter touches. Return visitors to Lochdubh will notice the constable’s latest enthusiasms; a sudden, rapturous interest in his Land Rover, as seen when he savours the action of pressing the keyfob, or name-checks the brand and features, even in moments of peril: “We can use the Land Rover’s winch to haul the van clear o’ the bridge’ Hamish said, grabbing a remote control handset from the glove-box.”

As far as I can work out, Hamish has had his Land Rover since 1988, so his abrupt passion for it is either a tender example of a love that sweetens with time, or an indication that someone new is at the wheel. The same goes for the note of blokeish lingering over Hamish’s route down the A9 to Glasgow: “The whole journey took four hours with just one stop for coffee, fuel and to change drivers.” Good, no doubt, to know, but since sedulous itinerary-keeping is hardly characteristic of the whimsical Hamish, the moment smacks forcefully of an author’s research outing. His infectious relish of the road aside, R. W. Green is an unobtrusive curator of Lochdubh’s mausoleum. His fondness is evident from the book’s cameo appearances, and upholding of Beaton’s favourite social dynamics, like the kinship between Highlanders and Americans. This bond, founded on a common frontier spirit and shared attitudes to Englishmen and woodsy interior design, is here embodied by Hamish’s camaraderie with the Chicago sergeant who triggers the global espionage subplot.

Now we may be in Buchan territory, but making a Richard Hannay of Hamish scatters the small-town charm of the series to the wind. A point frequently made about Lochdubh’s bobby is that his job is mostly plucking cats out of trees. If murders are already above Macbeth’s station, foiling spy syndicates are outside his genre.

This isn’t the first book to leave Lochdubh: at some point Beaton clearly started to think the village’s death toll was straining credulity. She needn’t have worried: Lochdubh’s murder rate is perfectly proportionate to the rate of murderable people drawn there. Beaton’s typical ensemble was reminiscent of Ronald Searle’s caricatures: perma-sozzled grotesques of dish-and-spoon physical extremes; toffs and tarts in poison splendour. A bitchy callousness was a distinguishing pleasure of these books, it gave bite to the native animosity for English incomers, who met with “outward Highland courtesy and inner Highland hate”. Such an atmosphere of covert loathing meant even locals could not be counted innocent. Relegating Lochdubh to “back at the ranch” status paints the village as it might appear on a shortbread tin, and sugars its residents beyond suspicion.

A global sweep also displaces Hamish, who used to range on the action’s periphery for a good fifty pages, while a gaudy selection of victims and villains squabbled and spat. Only once murder occurred would Hamish step forth. And like his Shakespearean namesake, his legend would simmer before he took centre-stage; Beaton habitually pairing hero and victim with a common element. In Death of a Gossip, Death of a Cad, and Death of an Outsider, the reader recognises that Hamish too, is an outsider, behaves like a cad and is an incurable gossip.

Hamish has little bearing, however, on a story of Russian spy networks. His promotion to leading man only smooths out his dog-eared corners, as the international expansion from Lochdubh paradoxically leaves this crime series cosier than ever.

Ash Caton is a writer living in Edinburgh, Scotland where he works in a bookshop and hosts the literary podcast "Ear Read This."