Death of a Gossip book review

Death of a Gossip by M.C. Beaton
Series: Hamish Macbeth #1
Published by Robinson on June 1, 2009
Pages: 224
Goodreads

Scottish highland village cop Hamish Macbeth must find which target was provoked enough to strangle and drown nasty fat widowed tabloid reporter Jane Winters, who revealed many others' guilty secrets.
Much is from the viewpoint of a naive secretary seduced by a blue-blood playboy. Icy blond beauty, aristocratic Priscilla Halburton-Smythe, lends a hand.

I have taken it upon myself to read the M.C. Beaton series and started with the Agatha Raisin series but I have to say that I enjoyed this book a lot more than that series. I think it was because there was more of a focus on the actual murder and the victim rather than the people of the village. I loved the fact that the victim was who she was and how hated she was within the group. I will say there was an awful lot of fishing knowledge interspersed throughout which wasn’t particularly interesting and I found myself wanting to skip through those bits. All in all, it was a nice and easy read with meant that it took the pressure from the other books off a little.

The characters in this one were really interested. I loved the eclectic group of people and the way they all came together. Although I wasn’t interested in the fishing part of the story it was interesting to see how each of the characters took to the task and how they went about learning about everything. I have to say my favourite character was Hamish himself, the way that he went against everyone to find out what had happened. I also thought the way he held himself and went about interrogating the characters to learn all about them and who they are. This was why he was one of the most enjoyable characters out of the book.

I think the best bit about Death of a Gossip was the actual murder and the happenings that took over afterward. I loved the mystery of what happened and why I think finding out more about the characters and their connections with one another and how the relationships developed. The strength of this book definitely lies in watching the characters interacting with each other and it was the part that I really enjoyed.

The worst bit for me would definitely be all the bits about fishing, I didn’t think the amount of detail that they ended up sharing didn’t feel as though it added anything to the story or the plot. I think I would have preferred for there to have been less on the fishing aspect of the story and more about the characters.

I definitely would recommend this book, it’s a great start to a series and I have already picked up the second one to carry on this month. I’m hoping that they become a fast favourite and something I can pick up if I need a little bit of light reading!

Have you read this series? Am I in for a fun ride or does it die down later on as the books carry on?