Cozy Sundays: Death of a Series--MC Beaton's Hamish MacRacket

Novelist MC Beaton, who died on the last day of 2019 at the age of 83, was an extremely prolific writer, and not just of mysteries.  If I counted right, she published, according to Wikipedia, 150 novels, almost half of these belonging to her two most famous mystery series: those about, respectively, Hamish Macbeth (1985-2018, 34 novels) and Agatha Raisin (1992-2019, 30 novels).  

Beaton actually began her fiction writing career (she had been a journalist before that) in the late Seventies, when she was in her early forties, with Regency Romances, having found, by her own declaration, the successors to Georgette Heyer sadly wanting in authenticity.  It takes a certain talent to maintain a successful fiction writing career for over four decades when you are that fecund--about four novels a year over four decades on average.  But this certain talent does not necessarily mean that one has a talent for writing good mysteries.  So the question arises: Was MC Beaton really any good as a mystery writer, whatever her undeniable appeal to many cozy mystery fans?

I recall reading some of Beaton's early Hamish Macbeth mysteries in the 1990s and enjoying them reasonably well. Having perused some of later Hamish Macbeth books more recently, however, I really have to wonder when exactly the series began running out of steam, even on its own humbler level.   

 MC Beaton, of course, is deemed one of the major cozy writers from the last three and a half decades, and that mere word cozy would cause many mystery readers to write her off peremptorily.  While I, like myriad others, don't share this unfair reflexive contempt for the cozy, I do believe that at some point the wheels came off Beaton's crime lorry, as it were, at least as regards the Hamish Macbeth series.  (I haven't yet read any of the later Agatha Raisins.)

The cover painting
by Francis Farmar
is cozier than the book.

I gave decidedly lukewarm reviews to MC Beaton's Hamish Macbeth novels Death of a Travelling Man (1993) and Death of a Bore (2005) here.  What did I think of my two most recent reads by her, of Death of a Valentine (2010) and Death of a Sweep (2011)?  Well, the first one isn't much, really, and the second is, well, simply dire.  It might better have been titled Death of a Series because if the series didn't improve from that point, it bloody well should have been ended.  

Yet Beaton dauntlessly continued writing the damn things for another seven years at a rate of one year--unless it was actually her secretary, R. W. Green, who has been continuing both this and the Agatha Raisin series after Beaton's death, who was composing them in the later years.  But, honestly, these later purported Beatons read like they were written by an aging author who simply was burnt out with the whole thing and was just going through the motions for her large, loyal audience.  

Here ya go!  Here's another one, folks!  Next!

And raking in the dough all the while, I might add.  After all, there may not be variety in the hamburgers served by McDonald's, but those commercial comestibles make the fast food chain a great deal of money.  So did Macbeths for MC Beaton.

I notice on Amazon that the later Beaton book Death of a Sweep, a one-star mystery if there ever were one, gets 4.5 stars based on over a thousand ratings, which tells you all you need to know about what Amazon ratings are worth nowadays.  Either the great majority of Beaton's audience is utterly undiscerning, or the "system" is shamelessly "rigged" with planted reviews, as a certain American reality television star and politician says.

Death of a Valentine is modestly the better of the two books, because it actually tells a coherent story, such as it is.  As any Hamish Macbeth reader will know, the books follow a rigidly set pattern: 

Hamish, a Police Sergeant in the Highlands village of Lochdubh, will have some sort of romantic misadventure and his former girlfriends Elspeth and Priscilla will pop up pointlessly (since the romances never go anywhere).

Hamish will get a constable who will be some manner of a comical fuck-up.

Hamish will take his feral cat Sonsie and his dog Lugs around a few times cause Beaton knew cozy mystery readers like pets in mysteries.

Some ecentirc villagers will put in token appearances.  ("Look the Currie sisters!  Sisters.")

Hamish's corrupt and inept superiors will continue to be corrupt and inept with no real consequences.

Oh, yes, there will be some sort of murder.  Actually, in these later books, a lot of murders!  

However, there won't be much mystery, because plotting a decent mystery apparently required more effort than the busy, aging author wanted to expend.

the American hardcover ed.

In Valentine there is a mystery--who killed the heartless beauty queen with a mail bomb valentine--but the solution is handed to Macbeth on a plate, or rather in a video recorder--surely no one could care one whit about this witless "mystery" peopled by puppets.

Any interest the story possesses comes from the plot about Hamish's increasingly insane constable, Josie McQueen, who it turns out is an obsessed stalker of Hamish, determined to trap him into marrying her.  All of this is weirdly played for laughs even when Josie decides she will drug Hamish with a date rape drug, get him naked and unconscious into bed with her and orgasm ("working herself up," as the author euphemistically puts it) so that "a smell of sex" will be apparent in the morning and Hamish will be honor bound to wed her!

And they call this is a cozy!  It reads more like Glenn Close in Fatal Attraction (without the rabbit), were that film a French sex farce.  But, I have to admit, there was a certain compelling aspect to this crazy story.  At least it had more suspense than the murder mystery.  I wanted to see mad, jilted Josie get her comeuppance.

And here, by the way, is the description murder of the titular valentine:

Now for that parcel.

There was a tab at the side to rip to get the parcel open.  She tore it across.  A terrific explosion tore apart the kitchen.  Ball bearings and nails, the latter viciously sharpened, tore into her face and body as flames engulfed her.  Perhaps it was a mercy that one of the nails pierced her brain, killing her outright, before the flames really took hold.

Well, that sure is cozy!  The only thing making this not actually horrific is the childish, Sally, Dick and Jane cadence of the endless succession of simple declarative sentences Beatons employs.  (Did Beaton dictate this stuff? I would suspect so.)  See Jane.  See the man knock Jane on the head.  See Jane bleed.  Die, Jane, die!

a swoop of sweeps

Far worse, however, is Death of a Sweep, retitled Death of a Chimney Sweep in the US.  Catch the publishers ever trusting their audience to know what a "sweep" is!  There are at least five murders in it (I lost track), so the only reason the poor dead irrelevant sweep was honored with the title, I'm sure, is because the chimney sweeps have cozy connotations.  Look at Dick Van Dyke in Mary Poppins! Chim-chim-cher-rie, everyone!  

The sweep isn't even the one whose body is found stuck up the chimney.  The book could just as easily been called Death of a Maid or Death of a Dustman--oh, wait, Beaton used those titles before--or Death of an Innocent Bystander.

Things start off fairly intriguingly, with a shady character hiding out with his mousy wife in the tiny Scottish village of Drim, but as the murders pile up, for no other reason, really, than to goose the story, the whole thing loses conherency.  As much as it's anything, the book is a thriller, with our old friend, effectively, the criminal gang, at work.  Beaton might be following Raymond Chandler's prescription about throwing in a man with a gun when you are stuck, except in Beaton's case it's another body.  

This is the kind of thing best left, really, to Edgar Wallace.  Beaton just meanders all over the place and there's little of the charm people associate with the series, rightly or not, with all this callous bloodletting going on.  (Two of the murdered women are comic snooper types and it's rather disconcerting to see them dispatched so violently.)  Altogether it's just a right bloody mess, neither fish nor fowl and one of the worst so-called mysteries I have ever read.  

MC Beaton always seems to suck me in again for another try--or maybe it's not her so much but those wonderful cozy covers her books get (some of the English ones have those charming paintings by Francis Farmar--but if I do any additional Beaton reading any time soon, I think, it will be Agatha Raisin.  I actually liked the first book in the Raisin series, Agatha Raisin and the Quiche of Death.  The characters and setting were better detailed and the mystery, while simple, was a thing of genius compared to the Hamish Macbeths I have read lately.  It's too bad, but apparently Beaton's devoted audience of Hamish MacFans came to demand very little from her in later years--and that is just what she gave them.