Book Review: Agatha Raisin and the Day the Floods Came

Reviewed By: Harriet Klausner

Agatha Raisin and the Day the Floods Came     Amazon US PB Amazon US HC Amazon Canada PB Amazon Canada HC
M. C. Beaton
Class/Genre:   Mystery   Cozy   Amateur Sleuth   Woman Main Character   Senior Sleuths
Series: Agatha Raisin # 12
St. Martin’s, July 2002, $22.95, 224 pp.

Agatha Raisin is in a deep funk. The man she loved, cherished after and finally married is divorcing her to become a monk in a French monastery. Her good friend Sir Charles is no longer available to keep her company because he married a French woman who is pregnant with twins. Her spirits are lifted when she finds the body of a bride in a wedding gown floating down the river.

She decides that since the police ruled the case a homicide she would solve it before the authorities do. Helping her is her new neighbor, crime writer John Armitage. While interviewing individuals connected to the victim, Agatha discovers the dead woman was a cunning, cold and manipulative person who was black mailing some people. While trying to figure out who that someone is, two attempts are made on her life before she finally figures it out and by then it is almost too late.

Agatha Raisin, a cranky, crude and raunchy woman somehow (and this reviewer doesn’t have a clue) manages to warm her way into the reader’s heart and elicit their sympathy. The latest installment in this long running series is funny, breezy and very enjoyable. Though the heroine has not changed an iota from the first tale, M.C. Beaton has written another winner.

Harriet Klausner

Reprinted with permission. Do Not repost without permission from the author, Harriet Klausner

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