Book #35 for 2022: Agatha Raisin and the Love from Hell by M.C. Beaton
This book is difficult to review without giving spoilers for this book, and previous ones.
[Spoiler (click to open)]
Agatha Raisin and the Love from Hell by M.C. Beaton
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
At the end of the previous book in the series, Agatha and James got married for real, but at the start of this one, things are not going well. It turns out that they are not getting on, and they end up moving into their own separate houses. Worse still, James is having an affair with a woman called Melissa.
Shortly into the book, Melissa is murdered, and James disappears. Unknown to Agatha, he travels to France where he joins a monastery. Meanwhile, Agatha and Charles attempt to uncover who killed Melissa.
It seems that there are a lot of people who might have wanted her dead; this includes two husbands, one of whom is a particularly creepy doll collector.
Overall, this was the best Agatha Raisin novel that I had read in some time, with a plot I found more engaging, and it had less of the usual slapstick humour found in some of the other titles. What really made this good was how it furthered the relationship between Agatha and James, leading to a touching epilogue. The only real problem was a plot involving James having a brain tumour that he had kept from Agatha, which got discarded very abruptly at the end.
This book is one of the few that has not been adapted for television yet, and the ending suggests that James is at least being temporarily written out of the book series. Although the TV version does not follow the novels in series order, based on their adaptations of some of the later novels, I suspect that we haven't seen the last of him.
View all my reviews
[Spoiler (click to open)]
Agatha Raisin and the Love from Hell by M.C. Beaton
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
At the end of the previous book in the series, Agatha and James got married for real, but at the start of this one, things are not going well. It turns out that they are not getting on, and they end up moving into their own separate houses. Worse still, James is having an affair with a woman called Melissa.
Shortly into the book, Melissa is murdered, and James disappears. Unknown to Agatha, he travels to France where he joins a monastery. Meanwhile, Agatha and Charles attempt to uncover who killed Melissa.
It seems that there are a lot of people who might have wanted her dead; this includes two husbands, one of whom is a particularly creepy doll collector.
Overall, this was the best Agatha Raisin novel that I had read in some time, with a plot I found more engaging, and it had less of the usual slapstick humour found in some of the other titles. What really made this good was how it furthered the relationship between Agatha and James, leading to a touching epilogue. The only real problem was a plot involving James having a brain tumour that he had kept from Agatha, which got discarded very abruptly at the end.
This book is one of the few that has not been adapted for television yet, and the ending suggests that James is at least being temporarily written out of the book series. Although the TV version does not follow the novels in series order, based on their adaptations of some of the later novels, I suspect that we haven't seen the last of him.
View all my reviews