Review: As The Pig Turns: An Agatha Raisin Mystery by M.C. Beaton

• Hardcover: 304 pages
• Publisher: Minotaur Books; First Edition edition (October 11, 2011)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0312387024
• ISBN-13: 978-0312387020

 Book Description


Winter Parva is a “picturesque” (touristy) Cotswold village with gift shops, a medieval market hall, and thatched cottages. After a disappointing Christmas season, the parish council has decided to hold a special event in January, complete with old-fashioned costumes, morris dancing, and a pig roast on the village green. 
Always one for a good roasting, Agatha Raisin organizes an outing to enjoy the merriment. The rotary spit turning over a bed of blazing charcoals is sure to please on this foggy and blistery evening. But as the fog lifts slightly, the sharp-eyed Agatha notices something peculiar about the pig: a tattoo of a heart with an arrow through it and the name Amy.

“Stop!” she screams suddenly. “Pigs don’t have tattoos.”

The “pig,” in fact, is Gary Beech, a policeman not exactly beloved by the locals, including Agatha herself. Although Agatha has every intention of leaving matters to the police, everything changes when the Gary’s ex-wife, Amy, hires Agatha’s detective agency to investigate—and another murder ensues. With that provocation, how could any sleuth as vain and competitive (and secretly insecure) as Agatha do anything other than solve the case herself?

About the Author

 

M.C. BEATON has been hailed as the “Queen of Crime” (The Globe and Mail). Chosen as the British guest of honor at Bouchercon 2006, she is the author of twenty-one previous Agatha Raisin novels, the Hamish Macbeth series, and an Edwardian mystery series published under the name Marion Chesney. Born in Scotland, she currently divides her time between Paris and the English Cotswolds.

My Review

I love love love the Agatha Raisin series by M.C. Beaton.  There is no better way to while away an afternoon than with Agatha Raisin.  Agatha is a loud, brash, overwhelming but endearing middle aged British woman who happens to constantly stumble across murders and mysteries.  She lives in the quiet bucolic Cotswold area in a lovely cottage with her two pet cats...who really do love her.  She has stumbled across and solved so many mysteries that she opened up her own detective agency.

Agatha thinks she is not loved and her pursuits of love (with all types of unsuitable men of course) always bring about the funniest situations and best laughs.  Agatha has actually created a great circle of friends and people that love her in her village and in her detective agency.  An outing with some of them to Winter Parva and her discovery that the roast pig is not a pig but a dead male body sets them off on a great adventure.

This adventure of Agatha Raisin is the 22nd in the series.  I cannot recommend this entire series enough and I really really recommend that you read it from the beginning.  It is in my opinion one of the best cozy mystery series out there.  I am already looking forward to the next adventure of Agatha, Charles, Toni, and James.