"Funny, breezy and very enjoyable"
Agatha Raisin is in a deep funk. The man she loved,
cherished after and finally married is divorcing her to
become a monk in a French monastery. Her good friend Sir
Charles is no longer available to keep her company because
he married a French woman who is pregnant with twins. Her
spirits are lifted when she finds the body of a bride in a
wedding gown floating down the river. She decides that since the police ruled the case a homicide
she would solve it before the authorities do. Helping her
is her new neighbor, crime writer John Armitage. While
interviewing individuals connected to the victim, Agatha
discovers the dead woman was a cunning, cold and
manipulative person who was blackmailing some people.
While trying to figure out who that someone is, two
attempts are made on her life before she finally figures it
out and by then it is almost too late. Agatha Raisin, a cranky, crude and raunchy woman somehow
(and this reviewer doesn't have a clue) manages to warm her
way into the reader's heart and elicit their sympathy. The
latest installment in this long running series is funny,
breezy and very enjoyable. Though the heroine has not
changed an iota from the first tale, M.C. Beaton has
written another winner. Harriet Klausner
Reviewed by PNR Group Member
Posted June 15, 2002
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Marital bliss was short-lived for Agatha Raisin. Her
marriage to James Lacey was a disaster from the beginning,
and in the end, he left her-not for another woman, but for
God. After having been miraculously cured of a brain tumor,
James has decided to join a monastery in France. Agatha can
usually depend on her old friend, Sir Charles Fraith, to be
there when times are tough, but even Charles has abandoned
her, dashing off to Paris to marry a young French tart.
Miserable and alone, Agatha hops on a plane and heads for a
remote island in the South Pacific. To Agatha's surprise,
she makes friends with her fellow travelers easily, and
keeps herself out of mischief, despite the odd feeling she
gets from one particularly attractive honeymooning couple.
But when she later finds that the pretty bride has drowned
under suspicious circumstances, Agatha wishes she had found
a way to intervene. Returning home to the Cotswolds, Agatha is grimly
determined to move on with her life and to forget about
James and Charles. They have, after all, forgotten about
her. And what better way than to throw herself into another
murder investigation? A woman, dressed in a wedding gown
and still clutching her bouquet, has just been found
floating in a river. The police say it's suicide, but
Agatha suspects the girl's flashy young fiancé. With the
help of her handsome, and single, new neighbor, Agatha sets
off to prove the police wrong.
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