Review: Agatha Raisin & the Quiche of Death
4/5 stars
Agatha Raisin & the Quiche of Death, by M.C. Beaton (1992)
As previously evidenced by my love of, for example, An Elderly Lady Must Not Be Crossed and Vera Wong's Unsolicited Advice for Murderers, I very much enjoy a kind of (or very) cranky old lady living alone and solving murders that the bumbling local police officers can't ever seem to get right. And here is another in the same vein! Though in this case, the protagonist is only in her mid-50s.
Agatha Raisin has decided to take an early retirement. She's selling her successful PR firm and her London flat, and moving to the quiet little town of Carsely, a few hours away. She's never had much of a life outside of work - no close friends, no real hobbies - so when she moves to a brand new town where she knows no one and has nothing to do, she is, unsurprisingly, quite bored. That is, until she decides that in order to make friends, she needs to enter the local baking contest. The only problem? She cannot bake. Instead, she travels to a favorite pastry shop in London to purchase a quiche, and enters it into the contest as her own. Seems like a great plan, but the following day the judge, Mr. Cummings-Brown, turns up dead from poisoning, and it's proven to be from her quiche. Now she has to find a way to clear her name, and find the real killer.
Agatha is not a likeable character - moody and surly, she has an intensely acerbic but hillarious internal dialogue, and a lot of that dialogue ends up coming out of her mouth. She's nasty to her neighbors. For example, she steals the next door neighbor's maid because a.) she does not clean, and b.) the neighbor wasn't overly friendly when she first moved in (not that Agatha would even appreciate someone being overly friendly. She makes it nearly impossible to be befriended... nevertheless, an ever-patient police officer joins her ranks to help solve the murder, and the vicar's wife proves to be a loyal friend despite Agatha's best efforts.
This is the first in a series of (gulp) THIRTY SEVEN Agatha Raisin books, which is, frankly... too many. But I'm definitely game for a few more! I'm not done with Agatha's wry wit and cantankerous disposition, and I have a sneaky suspicion she's hiding a softer side underneath that hard shell - for those she's willing to let see it, anyway.
The book is a stand-alone, meaning there is no cliff-hanger ending, so you don't need to commit to a series in order to enjoy this one.
UP NEXT: Cinder House, by Freya Marske
Comments