There Goes the Bride
M.C. Beaton
Minotaur, Sep 29 2009, $24.99
ISBN: 9780312387006
In a small village in the Cotswold of England, Agatha Raisin is getting more and more cases for her new detective agency. Overworked and needing a rest from her caseload Agatha takes a vacation visiting several of Europe’s most famous battlefields. She goes to Istanbul to see the infamous Charge of the Light Brigade during the Crimea War. However, Agatha is horrified to see her former husband James Lacey and his much younger fiancée Felicity Bross-Tilkingtonare also there.town. James assumes the obsessive compulsive Agatha Raisin is stalking him as he also sees her a continent from home in the Gallipolis.
Back in England, Agatha ignores his accusations and tries to ignore him too although the entire village is coming out for his second marriage. Agatha buries herself in her work while James waits for his bride to walk down the aisle; only to find her corpse with a bullet hole in it. The police suspect Agatha in a crime of passion, but she has witnesses that place her elsewhere. Felicity’s stunned distraught mother hires Agatha to find out who killed her daughter as she distrusts the cops to do an adequate job once they fixate on a suspect; in this case Agatha in spite of her alibi. However, her investigation proves dangerous as someone wants to inter Agatha resting in peace next to Felicity.
The twentieth Raisin cozy retains the amusing freshness and out of control fun of the previous entries as once again crotchety Agatha is her usual acerbic self with her ex, his fiancée, the cops, and returning sleuth Toni Gilmour. She is even acrimonious with her new love interest, Sylvan Dubois, a friend of Felicity’s father; as she suspects both of them in some dubious activities. The whodunit is a wonderful puzzler, but as always in this fabulous series, fifty something abrasive, acerbic Agatha owns the story line a she verbally dishes out A SPOONFUL OF POISON to anyone who ventures nearby.
Harriet Klausner
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