Murder mystery set in the Cotswolds

23rd October 2018

Agatha Raisin and the Dead Ringer by M C Beaton, murder mystery set in the Cotswolds.

The small, picturesque Cotswold village of Thirk Magna is all of a twitter at the impending visit of the dishy Bishop Peter Salver-Hinkley, and identical twins Mavis and Millicent Dupin are more of a twitter than most.  Dedicated bell ringers and self-appointed leaders of the community (they can trace their lineage back to William the Conqueror after all) they decide that nothing short of the longest bell ringing will do as a welcome for the great man.  Accordingly, they set about bullying the troupe of bell ringers into practice after practice.  Meanwhile, heartthrob lawyer, Julian Brody, one of the bell ringers, has hired our heroine Agatha Raisin to investigate the disappearance of the bishop’s ex-fiancée. Confused already?  Well, draw a deep breath – it’s about to get much more complicated.

No sooner is super sleuth Agatha on the scene than the bodies start to pile up.  First to cop it, is Larry Jensen, a local policeman whose body is found rotting fragrantly in the crypt.  Next Millicent Dupin falls foul of the murderer close to her beloved St Ethelred’s.  As murders continue around her, Agatha gets started on the work of investigation, but for Agatha Raisin the work of investigation always takes second place to her love of good food, booze, fags and pretty much anyone in trousers. Hence progress is slow.

I don’t suppose anyone reads M. C. Beaton’s Agatha Raisin books because they love detective fiction; the plots are far-fetched in the extreme and this one, 29^thin the series, is particularly disjointed, with a host of characters flitting about from Cotswold villages to Thailand and Bulgaria at breakneck and very confusing speed. Rather, lovers of this particular series of novels – and they have become something of a cult – read them for their black humour and for the central character of Agatha, who must surely be one of the rudest characters ever created.  I did enjoy the hideous twins, Mavis and Millicent Dupin, so proud of their heritage and so desperate to hook themselves a man, (preferably the delectable Bishop, described by one as “sex on legs”) that they will stop short of nothing including perpetrating violence on each other.

All of the Agatha Raisin books are set in pretty Cotswold villages, home to the author herself, and they certainly give the reader a flavour of village life and an impression of the charming nature of these chocolate-box hamlets with their thatched cottages, well-tended gardens, quaint tea-shops and historic churches.  It is hard not to think that the grotesque characters who populate Beaton’s novels must be distortions of the typical cast of inhabitants of any of these villages – quite enough to tempt the reader to visit and attempt spotting a few.

Ellen for the TripFiction Team

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