Death of a Charming Man

Taking a break from my challenge reading, I picked up M. C. Beaton's Death of a Charming Man at our library's used bookstore. This one is all about a posh English chap who has moved to the most unlikely of places--the backwater village of Drim, in Police constable Hamish Macbeth's patch. It isn't long before Peter Hynd has the town's matron's giggling like teenagers, visiting their hairdressers more often than most of us visit the grocery store, buying fancy undies, and working out at the local exercise palace (a place none of them seemed to know existed prior to Hynd's appearance). But the men of Drim are beginning to see red...just how many of their wives has he bedded? Hamish expects trouble and soon his expectations are fulfilled. Peter goes missing...but when a body finally turns up, it isn't the corpse Hamish has expected.

This was a very nice, light, cozy little mystery. Just the thing to take one's mind off of literary masterpieces like Rebecca, Jane Eyre, and Dante's Divine Comedy (I've still got to finish up Paridise...). I can't say this is one that I'll ever go back and read again. And I'm not even sure that I'll look for other Hamish Macbeth books. It was a pleasant read and I didn't spot the murderer, but it just didn't grab my attention the way I like my mysteries to do. Maybe I'm just not cut out for the Scottish Highlands. I can't really point out any great flaws...so, as a decent little mystery, I'm going to give it three stars out five.