With the lovely Priscilla Halburton-Smythe away in London, Lochdubh Constable Hamish Macbeth pines for company during the long Scottish winter. He gets his wish -- and -- more when a troupe of flashy, urbane filmmakers clamors into the nearby town of Drim. Before long bedlam erupts around their make -- believe mystery...and culminates in the sudden appearance of one very real corpse.

The initial suspect in the killing is one Patricia Martyn-Broyd, the aging mystery writer furious that her musty old cozies are getting a risqué face-lift in their TV reincarnation. Yet, going behind the scenes, Hamish soon finds a town full of locals bitten by the movie bug and a cast of quarreling show business types, all harboring their own secrets, lies, and hidden agendas. And as the culprit strikes again, Hamish must quickly find the right killer -- or script the wrong finale to a show gone murderously awry.

Patricia Martyn-Broyd was not an easy woman to like. The hawk-nosed spinster had retired to Scotland, unable to write another book since her 1965 mystery featuring the aristocratic Scottish detective Lady Harriet Vere. Local constable Hamish Macbeth, with the telepathic ability of the Highlander, thought Patricia must be lonely beneath her rigid pride. A bit lonely himself since the breakup of his engagement, he extended his friendship. But that was before fame and the movie people arrived...

A British TV company had decided to feature Lady Harriet in a new series. They didn't reveal to Patricia that a buxom soft-porn film star would star as Lady Harriet, that nude scenes had been added, or that the starchy aristocrat now presided over a 1960s hippie commune. Hamish, however, had a bad feeling about the whole venture, especially when the production crew set up in the nearby town of Drim. The constable knew there would be trouble between the middle-aged, dour townsfolk and the flashy, urbane filmmakers. And there was-murder.

When one of the scriptwriters for the series is found dead, the tension escalates on the set and in the streets of Drim. And as Hamish pokes into the town's secrets and the TV people's hidden agendas, he finds a large cast of people who wanted to cut out the writer for good-from the boozehound husband jealous of his actress wife's flagrant flirting to the tough, ambitious producer who was threatened with dismissal. Going behind the scenes, the detective knows he must resolve this deadly episode soon, for an impromptu killer is striking again, and again...