A to Z Blogging Challenge 2025: Mysteries: R Is For Agatha Raisin

 

The Agatha Raisin cosy mystery series is by M. C.  Beaton, who also wrote the Hamish Macbeth police procedural novels. Both series were turned into TV series. Penelope Keith starred in some Agatha Raisin radio plays as well as reading the novels for audiobook.

Agatha Raisin is a former public relations manager who has taken early retirement and moved to the Cotswolds, where she has wanted to live since she spent a family holiday there as a child. The village of Carsely, where she moves, is full of colourful characters and she makes friends with locals such as the vicar’s wife, Mrs Bloxby, young policeman Bill Wong and James Lacey, her good-looking neighbour and romantic interest. 

Agatha chain smokes and absolutely can’t cook or bake; her breakfast is a coffee and two cigarettes. She buys ready meals and goes to the pub to eat.

In the first novel, The Quiche Of Death, she decides to cheat in the village baking competition, thinking it will impress her new neighbours. She buys a spinach quiche at a specialty London bakery and enters it for the competition. Unfortunately for her, though she doesn’t win - the judge gives the prize to his girlfriend - he eats the quiche for supper and drops dead. The police pick up quickly that there is no way she could have made that quiche, but she wants to know who did commit the murder. 

She solves several mysteries as an amateur sleuth before setting up a detective agency of her own. The agency mostly solves simple problems, such as finding missing dogs, but Agatha continues to solve murders. 

The stories are delightfully funny and the characters are likeable, though sometimes irritating. James Lacey, her neighbour, often has to be dragged kicking and screaming into her adventures. Roy Silver, one of her former employees, often drops in to Carsely and ends up helping out with her adventures. 

The murders can be bizarre. For example, the third novel, The Potted Gardener, features a murder victim stuck upside down in a plant pot. Agatha has cheated yet again, this time in a garden competition. 

Agatha is kind hearted and generous, cheating or not. 

I have only seen a few episodes of the TV series, which isn’t quite faithful to the books, but is still enjoyable to watch. 

There are about 35 books in the series, though Agatha and her friends don’t seem to age much. It doesn’t seem to matter much. 

Highly recommended!

I was wondering why I seem to be ahead of everyone in the challenge, till I realised I’d posted last weekend, which you aren’t supposed to do, so I will skip this weekend and write my next post on Monday. See you then!