Showing results by narrator "David Monteath" in All Categories

Maggie Baird is neither kind nor generous, but she is very, very rich. So when her car catches fire, with her inside it, there are five likely candidates for the role of murderer. All five had been houseguests at her luxurious Highlands home - Maggie’s timid niece and four former lovers, one of whom Maggie had intended to pick for a husband. All five are utterly broke and all had ample opportunity to tamper with Maggie’s car. So finding out, who did it will require all of PC Hamish Macbeth’s extraordinary common sense and insight into human nature.

Trouble is afoot in the remote Scottish fishing village of Stoyre, where the inhabitants are acting kind of... fishy. On a routine visit, Hamish Macbeth finds the pub empty, the church unexpectedly full, and the very air permeated with fear. Then an explosion levels a holiday cottage which the locals call 'an act of God'. Hamish has another theory, one that will make the national news. With the help of sharp-eyed journalist Elspeth Grant and Lugs (his dog) he begins to winkle out the truth.

When Jane Wetherby offers PC Hamish Macbeth a holiday at her 'Happy Wanderer' health farm on the isle of Eileencraig, he is more than happy to accept. Unfortunately the visit doesn’t prove to be the pampering experience he had been hoping for. Windswept Eileencraig is inhabited by hostile islanders, many of whom would be more than happy to be rid of the Happy Wanderer and its proprietor. And the company at the health farm is hardly better. The volatile party includes an ex-husband, an illicit lover and Morag Todd, an unadulterated snob who criticises everybody and everything.

Striking during heavy rain and choosing only victims who abuse women, 'The Stabber' has police baffled. After the sixth man is found murdered, having been stabbed to death through his left eye, DCI Andy Gilchrist is at his wit's end. Struggling against his self-serving and autocratic boss, Gilchrist is left furious when he is taken off the case at a crucial point. Driven by his fear of failure, and desperate to redeem his career and his reputation, Gilchrist vows to catch The Stabber alone.

A country in desperate need of heroes. Angostin invaders surge through the Highlands, laying waste to everything in their path. Darkness follows in their wake as a mad necromancer resurrects the eons-dead Vampyre Kings. Only the bandit Jarek Mace, and the magicker and bard Owen Odell, have the courage to fight the Angostins and the undead. Whispers soon spread that Mace is the legendary Morningstar, a saviour who will protect his country in its hour of need. Yet Mace seems nothing more than a thief and a liar.

When Professor Francombe and her team of archaeologists find the remains of three women on a remote Kintyre hillside - a site rumoured to have been the base of Viking warlord Somerled - their delight soon turns to horror when they realise the women tragically met their end little more than two decades ago. It soon becomes clear that these are the three missing victims of the ‘Midweek Murderer’, a serial killer who was at work in Glasgow in the early 1990s. DCI Jim Daley now has the chance to put things right.

When the luxury cruiser, hastily renamed Great Britain, berths in Kinloch harbour, the pressure is on DCI Jim Daley. The UK Government are taking a high-powered group of businessmen and women on a tour of the British isles, golfing and seeing the sights, as part of a push for global trade. But when one of the crew goes missing, and an elderly local ornithologist disappears, will the pressure become too great?

You are invited to a very special murder mystery party. Listen to the witnesess. Examine the evidence. Solve the case. Be careful. Trust no one. All may not be as it seems. If you agree to play the role of the Great Detective, you must provide a complete solution to the case. A simple verdict is not enough. We need to know who did, how they did it, and why. Are you ready? Can you solve the ultimate murder mystery – and catch a killer?

It’s springtime in the Highlands but storms are brewing for Hamish Macbeth. His life is going to pot. He has - horrors! - been promoted, his new boss is a dunce, and a sinister self-proclaimed gypsy and his girlfriend have parked their rusty eyesore of a van in the middle of the village. Hamish smells trouble and as usual he’s right. The doctor’s drugs have gone missing. Money vanishes.

Private McAuslan, J.—the Dirtiest Soldier in the World (alias the Tartan Caliban)—demonstrates his unfitness for military service in this first volume of stories of life in a Scottish regiment. Unkempt, ungainly and unwashed, civilian listeners may regard him with shocked disbelief. But generations of ex-servicemen have hailed him with delight as a familiar friend—because every old soldier can remember a McAuslan!

There are many ruined castles in Scotland. One such lies outside the village of Drim. The keening wind explains the ghostly noises, but when Charlie falls through the floor, Hamish finds the body of a dead man propped up in a corner of the cellar. After Charlie is airlifted to the hospital, Chief Detective Inspector Blair arrives to investigate the body, but there is none to be found. Dismissed as a drunk making up stories, Hamish has to find and identify the body and its killer before the "ghost" can strike again.

The middle of winter in St Andrews. When a young woman's half-naked body is found on Fife's Coastal Path, frozen and with remnants of a rope manacle around her wrist, DCI Andy Gilchrist is given the case. Gilchrist's investigation uncovers a bloody trail of shootings and executions that lead him to the heart of a trafficking war.

PC Hamish Macbeth can't help but admire the resourcefulness of the Highlanders during the recession - in tough times they have to lure tourists to their sleepy towns and the quaint village of Braikie has come up with a novel solution. It really doesn't have that much to offer apart from a place of rare beauty called Buchan's Wood, which the clued-up local tourist board director has rechristened "The Fairy Glen" and has had brochures printed with a beautiful kingfisher rising from a lake on the cover.

It is 1547 and, after five years imprisonment and exile far from his homeland, Francis Crawford of Lymond - scholar, soldier, rebel, nobleman, outlaw - has at last come back to Edinburgh. But for many in an already divided Scotland, where conspiracies swarm around the infant Queen Mary like clouds of midges, he is not welcome. Lymond is wanted for treason and murder, and he is accompanied by a band of killers and ruffians who will only bring further violence and strife. Is he back to foment rebellion? Does he seek revenge on those who banished him? Or has he returned to clear his name?

When the body of Thomas Magner’s business partner is found dead in his car on the outskirts of Anstruther, all evidence points to suicide. And Magner himself, a wealthy property developer, is currently under investigation for a series of alleged rapes from thirty years ago. In total fifteen women are prepared to go to court to testify against Magner but one by one they inexplicably withdraw their complaints until only five remain. With the CPS now reconsidering its case, one of Magner’s accusers is killed in a hit-and-run – and the abandoned car is found to be registered to one T Magner.

When a woman's skeleton is discovered in a shallow grave DCI Andy Gilchrist is tasked with finding her murderer. But a psychic's warnings and markings on a rusted cigarette lighter found among the rotted remains set Gilchrist off on a trail that will take him back 35 years back. When dental records from an extracted tooth force Gilchrist to confront the unthinkable - that his brother was her killer - he keeps his fears to himself, only to be suspended on suspicion of destroying evidence. But Gilchrist battles on

A woman's body is washed up on the rocks by the castle ruins in St Andrews with evidence of strangulation, and no ID. Two days into the case, a call from another woman claiming to be the victim's friend could be DCI Andy Gilchrist's first solid lead. But when she fails to turn up for an interview, Gilchrist fears the worst. The next day, they find her battered body.

Recovering addict Tommy Jarret has rented a chalet to check out reports of a sea monster near the village of Drim. Then he turns up dead, apparently from a drug overdose, and constable Hamish Macbeth finds the lad's demise particularly fishy. Deciding to go undercover, Hamish infiltrates the local drug dealing trade. But his plans looks doomed when he's teamed up with a tough Glaswegian detective inspector named Olivia Chater, aka Concrete Knickers. For the Lochdubh lawman it would be equally dangerous to flounder...or fall in love.

Hamish Macbeth is savouring the delights of a Highland summer. But as fast as the rain rolls in from the loch, his happy life goes to hell in a handbasket. The trouble begins when his beloved Priscilla Halburton-Smythe returns to Lochdubh with a new fiancé on her arm. His miseries multiply when clouds of midges descend on the town. And then a paragon of housewife perfection named Trixie Thomas moves into Lochdubh with her cowed husband in tow. The newcomer quickly convinces the local ladies to embrace low-cholesterol meals, ban alcohol, and begin bird-watching.