Product Description

This title is second in the highly popular "Agatha Raisin" murder mystery series. The highly irrepressible Agatha feels sure the attractive new village vet has taken a shine to her, yet before romance can blossom, Dr Bladen accidentally kills himself in an unfortunate incident involving a horse and a needle. Ah well, his death serves as an excuse for her to become chummier with her neighbour James Lacey as once more they are thrown together in an amateur murder investigation...

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #9965 in Books
• Published on: 2004-06-17
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 224 pages

About the Author
M C Beaton is the author of the highly acclaimed Hamish Macbeth mystery series. This novel begins a new series featuring sleuth Mrs Agatha Raisin. Born in Scotland, Beaton now lives in the Costwolds.

Customer Reviews

GREAT FUN
The cover describes Agatha Raisin as a cross between Miss Marple and Lucille Ball (and Auntie Mame - but I don't know her). This is quite accurate. The story is most amusing, the dialogue is great and the insights into English country living are hilarious. This is the first Agatha Raisin I have read (mainly because it dealt with a vet) and I am hooked. I am ordering the rest of the series at once.

Sex, Drugs and Disco
In the second book of this delightful series Agatha has turned her romantic attentions away from her next door neighbor James Lacey and toward Paul Bladen, the new vet in Carsely. Unfortunately for Agatha, many of the other ladies in town have done the same and it appears that there could be a free for all until the vet turns up dead. The police rule it an accident but Agatha isn't convinced and neither is James Lacey it turns out. In fact, now that Agatha doesn't appear to be chasing after him anymore Lacey is quite comfortable hanging around with her and the two are soon hot on the trail of what might well be an imaginary killer.

As it turns out, several of Bladen's lady friends were no longer his friends at all by the time of his death and the list of suspects is therefore rather long. Then, at a meeting of the Carsely Ladies Society one of the suspects who has had far too much of the spiked apple cider announces loudly to Agatha that she will tell her everything about the "Vicious Vet" the next morning. The next morning the suspect list is reduced by one as Agatha finds her informant dead. Again Agatha and James are left to wonder if this death is natural or murder.

In this series entry the author introduces several new characters into the Carsely landscape, most of who are suspects in the vet's death. Back from the first book are Agatha's policeman friend Bill Wong, her cleaning lady Doris Simpson, Mrs. Bloxby who always seems to bring out the best in Agatha and of course James Lacey. The reader will also in this book get an explanation of Lacey's phobia like fear of aggressive females. This being one of Lacey's main character traits and the trait that most frustrates Agatha it is good to finally understand what is going on.

I was quite fond of the first entry in this series but I liked this book even more. The first book in any series always bogs down just a tad in the author's effort to define the characters and the series' setting. That having been done in the first book, this entry had a much better flow and was in fact a real page-turner. I found this to be one of those books that kept me up far into the night as I read on to see what would happen next. The mystery itself does occasionally take a back set to the characters but that is a common trait in these type of warm fuzzy mysteries and when the characters are as enjoyable as the ones in this book this trait is indeed a blessing and not a flaw.

Was the death of the "Vicious Vet" an accident? Did one of his lady friends simply die of complications from her diabetes with no foul play involved? Or is there a wild murderer loose Cotswolds? There is only one way to find out and I highly recommend that you do so.

Raisin Irony
Second in the Agatha Raisin series by Marion Chesney (writing as M.C.Beaton). Agatha, retired PR guru (and she would emphasise that she retired early), returns to her archetypal Cotswold village from an abortive Caribbean holiday to discover a dishy new vet has set up shop there. Perhaps he'll prove an easier catch than James, her nextdoor neighbour. However, life expectancy in the archetypal villages of cosy mysteries can be somewhat abruptly concluded.

Agatha Raisin is an ironic take on Miss Marple - she's less syrupy than Christie's sleuth, more abrasive, and she's decidedly sexually predatory. Agatha is a determined but gauche sexual being - she devotes more attention to dressing right, slapping on the right amount of warpaint, getting the ambience right, than to actual detection. She likes her food, she likes her booze, and she likes her cats. She's bright and resourceful and quite likeable. Bur her detective skills are hardly the cerebral powers of detection exemplified by Holmes, Marple, or Poirot - determination and bloody mindedness are more her forte, with just a soupcon of intuition. Agatha has her police collaborator, in the form of Bill Wong - I confess to feeling let down by the description of his home and family. And there is an ensemble cast of village folk, from vicar's wife to unmarried mother, ironic little sketches of characters who contrast with their counterparts in a Marple mystery.

It's an entertaining book - the Agatha Raisin series is written with genuine humour and charm - and there is an intriguing mystery to be unravelled here, with plenty of suspects and not a few red herrings. Where the book falls down, however, is in the method of deduction. The way some of the evidence is obtained is just too far fetched - it's a bit deus ex machina, 'with one bound he was free' simplicity. The strength of the Agatha Raisin series lies in the humour and insightful characterisation which trips off the pages - the weakness is in the detection side. With the detection side made a touch more real and gritty, this would be a very fine series - but maybe this is partly satirising the superhuman powers of deduction and convenient presentation of evidence found in many cosy mysteries?