Hamish Macbeth, constable in the small Scottish Highland town of Lochdubh, needs a holiday but ends up facing more problems—including a murder.

Macbeth is feeling down after losing both his promotion and his girlfriend, the town beauty, Priscilla Halbourton-Smythe. A trip to a charming seaside inn with his dog Towser is meant to raise his sagging spirits.

Instead, he arrives at lodging to find the ambiance chilling, the food inedible, and his fellow guests less than neighborly. There's an amorous spinster, two flirty girls, a retired military man, a secretive London family, and Bob Harris, who so nags his wife, Doris, that everyone wants to kill him.

Then somebody does. Soon Macbeth is called upon to act—to dig into the past and deep into the heart to deliver something more daunting than merely the culprit: justice.