It's springtime in the Highlands and murder is in bloom!

Hamish Macbeth's 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 centre of the village.

Hamish smells trouble and as usual he's right. The doctor's drugs go missing. Money vanishes. And neighbours suddenly become un-neighbourly... Nobody wants to volunteer a single scrap of information, so canny Hamish sets about the delicate task of worming the facts out of the villagers. And in the process he uncovers a story so bizarre that neither he nor the locals may ever recover from it...

Praise for M C Beaton:

'The books are a delight: clever, intricate, sardonic and amazingly true to the real Highlands' Kerry Greenwood

'It's always a special treat to return to Lochdubh' New York Times