Hamish Macbeth is once again alone, working as the sole police officer in Lochdubh in rural Scotland. He’s not lonely, as he has his dog Lugs and his wildcat Sonsie, and he has to keep working in order to show to his bosses that Lochdubh needs to keep its tiny station open. They keep trying to close it to shrink the budget, but Hamish will do whatever he has to in order to keep the doors open.

When a woman’s body washes up in a nearby loch, Hamish is the first on the scene. Although the woman had been in the water for a while, he was still able to recognize her as Kate Hibbert. She had only been living in the area for about a year, but she’d been seen leaving one day with a large suitcase. Hamish had taken a missing persons report on her, but he hadn’t expected her to turn up in a loch, like this.

As he’s waiting for more officers to show up along with the crime scene investigators, he sees her suitcase nearby. He pulls it out of the water and looks through it quickly. He finds a packet hidden inside and snags that for himself before anyone else shows up. When he gets back to the station, he starts to look through it. He finds some love letters, but he’s interrupted before he gets much further.

Detective Chief Inspector Jimmy Anderson is at Hamish’s door, wanting a chat and maybe a but of whisky. He’s heading up the investigation on the murdered woman, but he’s going to need Hamish’s help investigating locally and talking to those who knew the victim. They’re still waiting for the official identification, but they’re pretty sure it is the missing woman. As they talk it over, Jimmy has another glass or two of the whisky.

When Jimmy gets up to drive himself back, Hamish tries to stop him. Jimmy insists he’s okay to drive, so Hamish lets him go. But it’s not that long before Hamish gets the call from him that he’s been in an accident. Hamish goes to him, calling an ambulance on the way. Jimmy is banged up and has to stay in the hospital for a bit, but he’s okay. However, that means that the investigation will be handed off to DCI Blair.

Hamish and Blair have a history, that caused the murder of Hamish’s fiancée, because of Blair’s association with a gang of criminals from Glasgow. Hamish almost killed the man himself after Dorothy’s death, but he was stopped just in time. Now Hamish has to help Blair with this investigation, despite the fact that he can’t trust Blair at all, in order to save his job, his Lochdubh station, and his home.

And when Blair sends a young Detective Constable to help Hamish, he knows that he will have to be extra careful or else everything he has done (including stealing that packet from the dead woman’s suitcase) will be reported back to Blair, and all his hard work will be for nothing as he is fired, humiliated, and left homeless. But mostly, he wants to find out what happened to the woman and what secrets she’d been keeping that caused her to be killed.

Death of a Traitor is the latest in the famous Hamish Macbeth series from beloved author M.C. Beaton. Written from her notes and conversations, co-author R.W. Green has crafted another story of good and evil inside the rural Scottish police force, with Hamish fighting for his small corner of the country. As the investigation reveals what’s been going on near Lochdubh, it reveals layers of secrets and betrayals, as the clues slowly come together into a motive for murder.

I have been a big fan of Beaton for a long time, and I am so glad to see her characters live on after her death. Hamish is such a complex character, a good man who understands when you need to do a little wrong to balance things out, and while he may not be so lucky in love, his hard work as a policeman tends to pay off. He is smart, loyal, and steadfast, and I love spending some time with him in Lochdubh from time to time. Death of a Traitor is another emotional story about this great character, about those who have his back and those who don’t deserve the time of day.

Egalleys for Death of a Traitor were provided by Grand Central Publishing through NetGalley, with many thanks.