Death of a Scriptwriter (Hamish Macbeth 14)

Author/Guide: M.C. Beaton

Why a Booktrail?

2000s: Hollywood comes to Hamish

ISBN: 978-1472105332
Genre: Cosy crime, Mystery

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What you need to know before your trail

Patricia Martyn-Broyd, now in her seventies, has retired to the Highlands. She hasn’t written a word in years and her books are out of print. But now a television company is about to film her last detective story, featuring the aristocratic Scottish detective Lady Harriet Vare. Even better, a London publisher is bringing the book into print. Even though the snobbish Miss Martyn-Broyd doesn’t care to mix with the locals she can’t help but share her excitement with local policeman Hamish Macbeth.

Imagine her horror when Miss Martyn-Broyd discovers that Lady Harriet Vare is portrayed as a pot-smoking hippy, that the screenwriter is known for his violent and scurrilous scripts and that Lady Harriet is going to be played by the scene-stealing trollop Penelope Gates. But a contract is a contract, Ms Martyn-Broyd quickly learns and when she is accused of murdering the scriptwriter and the leading lady, she turns to her one friend in Lochdubh, Hamish Macbeth, to help her.

Locations

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Travel Guide

Hamish Macbeth country

Lochdubh

Constable Hamish Macbeth lives in the fictitious town of Lochdubh in Sutherland, Scotland.

The TV version – Plockton

The series was filmed on location in the village of Plockton, the town of Kyle of Lochalsh and the surrounding area.

This TV link comes in handy for this novel since there is a strong link to the film industry and the issues of landscape and setting.

Cnothan

“Patricia Martyn-Broyd had not written a detective story in years. In her early seventies, she had retired to the Highlands of Sutherland on the east side of the Village of Cnothan, to a trim, low, white-washed croft house”

Sutherland

“The county of Sutherland is the largest, most under populated area in Western Europe, with its lochs and mountains and vast expanses of bleak moorland.”