Sometimes the Frost Review Team receive a real treat. This time, bagsy me.

 

Agatha Raisin, Pushing up Daisies arrived on the mat…

 

M.C. Beaton has done it again. She is my hero, my saviour, the writer who lifts my heart, the one I truly believe has looked in the window and created a detective who is as rude as I am. No, I am not always, but sometimes. Lovely, lovely Agatha does not have the filter that others do. She thinks something, and out it comes. Is it an age thing?

 

And no, it’s not nice, or kind, and my mum would have added, nor is it funny to be rude. It’s true that it’s not nice, not kind – but good grief, M.C. Beaton is certainly so very funny. There’s no faffing about calling a spade a nice little trowel. Not, it’s a shovel.

 

Lord Bellington, Carsley’s biggest landholder, has enraged locals with his plans to sell off their allotments to make way for a new housing development. So when he turns up dead, nobody mourns his passing.

 

Indeed, I should think not, having worked my very precious allotment alongside many others doing the same – if that had been in jeopardy from a dastardly developer, the list of suspects would have been huge.

 

The problem is, the body count keeps mounting in Pushing Up Daisies, and our hero, Agatha, has to weave her way through a world of petty feuds, while she herself is cast down by moments of self-doubt.

 

This is what is so glorious about Agatha. Not only does she blast her way through the sensibilities of some she meets, she is, also, beneath it all, rather a delicate flower. No, I need to alter that. Not delicate, but vulnerable, in her search for love, something which underpins all the wonderful books in the Agatha Raison series.

 

I had rather forgotten about these wonderful books as work pressures have mounted, but have been out and bought several to take on a week’s break before beginning another novel of my own for Arrow. People will wonder why on earth I am laughing aloud, and with fondness at this black comedy, unless of course, there are more Agatha Raison fans around at the time. Then they will understand and we’ll exchange knowing looks.

 

Buy it, enhance your life. And buy the next, and the… Well, you get the picture.

 

While you’re at it, don’t forget the Hamish Macbeth series too, also written by M.C. Beaton.

 

Pushing Up Daisies (Agatha Raisin) M.C. Beaton pb £7.99