Agatha Raisin - M.C. Beaton


 

I'm not going to review each of these books separately. They're pretty much all the same! 

The books I have read since starting this blog are:

The Perfect Paragon
Love, Lies and Liquor
Kissing Christmas Goodbye
A Spoonful of Poison
There Goes the Bride
Busy Body
As The Pig Turns
Hiss and Hers
Christmas Crumble
Something Borrowed, Someone Dead
The Blood of an Englishman
Dishing the Dirt
Pushing up Daisies
The Witches' Tree
The Dead Ringer
Beating about the Bush.

I'm addicted to them. They are my go-to popcorn books, they require zero brain power and are sometimes just what I need to escape.

The cases themselves are often quite weak but Agatha Raisin is such a great character. Hugely flawed, seemingly hard and uncaring, she's actually extremely vulnerable and insecure. I mean, don't get me wrong, she is a total cow! But she also just really needs someone to care for her. She grew up in the slums of Birmingham, very poor with awful parents, she escaped this with a legacy of strength and bolshiness but also a horrible shame about her background and terrified people will find out and look down on her for it.

Anyway, in almost all of the cases .... Agatha offends someone, they end up dead, she's suspected, she solves the crime through instinct and belligerence. This happened to her so many times she ended up starting a detective agency so sometimes she is even paid to solve the murders. 

And there's almost always a side story of a totally unsuitable man that she's fallen hopelessly in love with.

My favourite thing about the books is that the first was written in 1992 and the most recent was 2021 and she has remained a steadfast early-50s throughout. Sometimes the case can span a couple of years and she still remains the same age. I love it!

Politically, I strongly suspect she's on the right end of the spectrum. It's never said specifically but she's often ranting about the smoking ban and destruction of the country lifestyle and other sorts of wokisms. Thankfully they never touch on Brexit! I mean, I don't know, she's pretty tolerant of people's lifestyle choices and non-judgemental as long as you're not murdering people or judging her so maybe I'm misreading her. I'm glad it's never explicitly defined so that I can just think of her as generally cross and not political.

But now, I've only got two more in the series to read, and MC Beaton has only gone and died! I can't bear it!

PS Don't judge the books by the TV series! Completely different character development.

 

 

 

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