Book Review: Agatha Raisin - A spoonful of poison - M. C. Beaton

“If the chemists could ever come up with a bottle of something labelled ‘Self-Respect’ that actually worked, they could make millions, she thought.” 

I just love Agatha Raisin, I have started to read the serie in 2016 and I am slowly sipping them like a good wine when I need a cheer-me-up read. They are my Linus' blanket as I wrote about on this post.

Agatha is blunt, noisy, a force of nature, but also with a big heart and very insecure of herself inside.

In this novel, number 19, Agatha is back in full form, ready to tackle another unusual murder, which presented little clues this time, and ready to fall for other men again, now that James Lacey is (almost?) forgotten.

The setting is yet another little, old-fashioned, very secretive village in the Cotswold, a stunning place to visit by the way, quintessential English. And with the village come the characters, the vicar, the vicar's wife, the lady of the manor, the gorgeous widow, the strange ladies. The murders (three in total) are of drugs and vendetta, money and jealousies, boredom and fraud.

I just love Agatha, it is one of the best female characters ever, she always make me smile and laugh and also make me want to hug her!

Overall rating: 6,5      Plot: 6,5     Writing style: 7      Cover:  8

Title: Agatha Raisin - A spoonful of poision

Author: M. C. Beaton
Publisher: Constable
Pages: 304
Publication year: 2010

Plot:

Cranky but lovable sleuth Agatha Raisin's detective agency has become so successful that she wants nothing more than to take quality time for rest and relaxation. But as soon as she begins closing the agency on weekends, she remembers that when she has plenty of quality time, she doesn't know what to do with it. So it doesn't take much for the vicar of a nearby village to persuade her to help publicize the church fete---especially when the fair's organizer, George Selby, turns out to be a gorgeous widower.Agatha brings out the crowds for the fete, all right, but there's more going on than innocent village fun. Several of the offerings in the jam-tasting booth turn out to be poisoned, and the festive family event becomes the scene of two murders.Along with her young and (much to her dismay) pretty sidekick, Toni, Agatha must uncover the truth behind the jam tampering, keep the church funds safe from theft, and expose the nasty secrets lurking in the village---all while falling for handsome George, who may have secrets of his own.

The Author:

M.C. Beaton was born in Glasgow, Scotland. She started her first job as a bookseller in charge of the fiction department at John Smith & Sons Ltd. While bookselling, by chance, she received an offer from the Scottish Daily Mail to review variety shows and quickly rose to become their theatre critic. She left Smith’s to join Scottish Field magazine as a secretary in the advertising department, without any shorthand or typing experience, but quickly got the job of fashion editor instead. She then moved to the Scottish Daily Express where she reported mostly on crime. This was followed by a move to Fleet Street to the Daily Express where she became chief woman reporter.After marrying Harry Scott Gibbons and having a son, Charles, Marion moved to the United States where Harry had been offered the position of editor of the Oyster Bay Guardian. They subsequently moved to Virginia and Marion worked as a waitress in a greasy spoon in Alexandria while Harry washed the dishes. Both then got jobs at Rupert Murdoch’s new tabloid, The Star, and moved to New York. Anxious to spend more time at home with her small son, Marion, supported by her husband, started to write Regency romances. After she had written close to 100, and had gotten fed up with the 1811 to 1820 period, she began to write detective stories under the pseudonym of M. C. Beaton. On a trip from the States to Sutherland on holiday, a course at a fishing school inspired the first Hamish Macbeth story. Marion and Harry returned to Britain and bought a croft house in Sutherland where Harry reared a flock of black sheep. When her son graduated, and both of his parents tired of the long commute to the north of Scotland, they moved to the Cotswolds, where Agatha Raisin was created.While Marion wrote her historical romances under her maiden name, Marion Chesney, as well as several pseudonyms (Helen Crampton, Ann Fairfax, Jennie Tremaine, and Charlotte Ward), because of her great success with mystery novels as M. C. Beaton, most of her publishers both in the U.S. and abroad use the M. C. Beaton pseudonym for all of her novels.