Agatha Raisin and the Quiche of Death

The Quiche of Death by M.C. Beaton
Series: Agatha Raisin #1
Published by St. Martin's Paperbacks on March 7, 2006
Pages: 246
Goodreads

Putting all her eggs in one basket, Agatha Raisin gives up her successful PR firm, sells her London flat, and samples a taste of early retirement in the quiet village of Carsely. Bored, lonely and used to getting her way, she enters a local baking contest: Surely a blue ribbon for the best quiche will make her the toast of the town. But her recipe for social advancement sours when Judge Cummings-Browne not only snubs her entry--but falls over dead! After her quiche's secret ingredient turns out to be poison, she must reveal the unsavory truth…
Agatha has never baked a thing in her life! In fact, she bought her entry ready-made from an upper crust London quicherie. Grating on the nerves of several Carsely residents, she is soon receiving sinister notes. Has her cheating and meddling landed her in hot water, or are the threats related to the suspicious death? It may mean the difference between egg on her face and a coroner's tag on her toe…

The Agatha Raisin books are all books that have been raved about by everyone that ends up borrowing them from the library. I have been trying to broaden my reading horizons for when YA has started to leave me a little wanting. I thought that I couldn’t really go wrong, the book was a short one, and it wouldn’t take me much time to read it and figure out whether it was worth my time or not. Well Quiche of Death was definitely not what I was expecting, for a start you can definitely feel the age of this book with the lack of modern technology and the slang used. I thought that would end up irritating me more than anything and I actually really enjoyed that part of it. I think the lack of texting and all that comes with that meant I could really connect with the characters and who they were as people.

The main character is obviously Agatha Raisin who has decided to sell her PR firm and retire to an idyllic cottage. I loved Agatha as a character because although she truly believes that this retirement will be the best thing and she ends up hating all of it, ending up being bored and without purpose and I really enjoyed reading about her realisation and her growth as a person and how she ends up trying to deal with that. It was really funny and also really interesting dynamics as she tries to meld both her London life with her new life in the country. She really makes this book what it is and she made me smile and laugh and also empathise with her. She was a really well-written character.

I loved learning more about the village and the fact that Agatha had more problems dealing with the villagers than with the people in London. It was really interesting and the best bit of the book to see how she uses her talents to help those around her and make up for any of misdoing that she might have had a part of. I thought that reading about the way that she struggles to integrate her way into the village and win over those who lived around her. I just thought the self-doubt and the way the village worked was really well described and it offered quite a lot of humour into the story and I really appreciated that it wasn’t the perfect retirement with some murder dropped in.

Now, this is probably going to sound like a little bit of a contradiction especially as I have just spent however long raving about the village and how it was a short book but I did think that it was a little short. I think the ending felt a little rushed and I wish there had been more to do with the actual murder sprinkled all the way through.

I actually would recommend Agatha Raisin and the Quiche of the Death, I will definitely be picking up the next one in the series purely because they seem to be nice and easy reads and I’m always after those kinds of reads, especially in the middle of a book hangover.

What books do you tend to gravitate towards when you’re looking for something easy but still interesting to read? Let me know in the comments!