Agatha Raisin and Kissing Christmas Goodbye

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Like a lot of mystery series, you don't necessarily need to read the previous books to understand what's going on. Her books feel more domestic and cozy, yet she touches on tough topics without caring to deal with them. Mal écrit, mal construit, les dialogues sont pouiches et répétitifs, Agatha Raisin est agressante au possible, mais tout ça aurait pu se pardonner si au moins ça s'était passé à Noël comme le titre le laissait entendre. As with most mysteries and detective fiction I've read that are supposedly set around Christmas, there's very little to do with Christmas herein! The main reason is because the mysteries themselves are much more developed, well orchestrated and not as easy to figure out.

En attendant (nous sommes au mois d'octobre), Agatha accepte de rendre visite à une vieille excentrique qui prétend être en danger. Agatha, her trusty sidekick, Sir Charles, a new young woman, Toni - I do hope Toni will stay, have a feeling she would be too much competition for our redoubtable detective. It is a shame, the plots are there, a bit shaky at times, but all the ingredients jostle for place, all they lack is the patience (or maybe the time, since M. Only in the very last chapter do we have an early Christmas party, and it all falls very flat and isn’t festive.Never mind, I have got used to series now, and I have to say that this book has quite a convoluted plot, maybe a few too many murders (is she vying with the TV series, Midsomer Murders? In the same vein as Hamish Macbeth, M C Beaton gets away with it because you, as a reader, become fond of the characters and so when another book is churned out, you instinctively hope that maybe something good has at long last happened to the main character and so your loyalty hasn't been in vain, unfortunately as with Hamish Macbeth this never happens and you get to the end of another book saddened that you cannot get that time you have just invested, back again. Why I'm rereading this: The last time I read this (review here, the 18th installment of the Agatha Raisin mysteries, I really didn't know much about this mystery series. And in her dreams, James Lacey kissed her under the mistletoe, and, like a middle-aged sleeping beauty, she would awake to passion once more. But having enjoyed the tv series and in anticipation of the tv show of this book debuting tomorrow on Acorn, I decided I'd give it another go.

I thought the book was extremely boring; I can’t even remember the plot (I think there was more than one murder, but I could be wrong), and a lot of serious topics (such as domestic abuse or sexual harassment) were treated way too lightly for my taste One of the main characters gets harassed at work, quits and joins the main character’s detective agency, gets abused at home by a drunk brother and ignored by her alcoholic mother, and goes to live with the main character. Who in this rather sterile house, complete with fake family portraits, could have hated the old lady enough to poison her?She divides her time between the Cotswolds, where she lives in a village very much like Agatha's beloved Carsely, and Paris.