There Goes the Bride: An Agatha Raisin Mystery (Agatha Raisin Mysteries, 20)

I love the Agatha Raisin series by M.C. Beaton. They are highly entertaining and always leave me with a chuckle.

Yay, Agatha goes again through her misadventures, and i must say she is definitely improving with age, even though if you told her that to her face, she'd disagree. But truly, she seems to be escaping out of misadventures quite a lot in this one... this one i found quite cheery... rock on Agatha ~ bravo Ms Beaton... we await more of the Agatha (and Hamish) adventures... thanks again x0x0 :)

Detective Agatha Raisin is fit to be tied. Her ex-husband, James Lacey, is getting married to Felicity Bross-Tilkington, a rich, young, beautiful blonde. While Agatha is over him (or so she tells herself), she is none too eager to attend the wedding. But staying away will make it look like she's still pining for James, so attend she will. Happily, though, Agatha has several friends and colleagues to accompany her and provide much-needed support, so she sets out from her cozy village in the English Cotswolds and heads to Sussex. The pre-wedding party is a fiasco, but the wedding is murder --- literally. Felicity is found dead before she can make it down the aisle, setting off a police investigation that places Agatha and James as prime suspects. Fate is on their side, though, and both Agatha and James are able to prove their whereabouts at the time of the murder. As to be expected, Agatha is hired (by the bride's mother) to investigate Felicity's untimely demise. But the bride's father is none too keen to have her poking her nose into the affair --- and neither are the local police. Still, Agatha is not one to let that stop her; she and her team of detectives are soon on the case. As they begin to dig into dirty details of the bride's life, they find that she wasn't quite the innocent young thing she pretended to be. While she refused her husband-to-be sex before marriage, she apparently didn't have such qualms with other men. As it turns out, Felicity Bross-Tilkington was quite the little vixen when she wanted to be. The word "insatiable" springs to mind. With this new information coming to light, it doesn't take long for the list of suspects to grow: a mysterious Frenchman, a surly security guard, a gang of young stalkers, and two men to whom she was previously engaged. Are one of these men the guilty party? And another question: why do the Bross-Tilkingtons have so much security? What are they afraid of? Theft? Enemies? Intruders? Agatha manages to get herself into one scrape after another as she crashes around like a bull in a china shop trying to solve the murder and answer these questions --- and avoid becoming the next victim. One of the best parts of this novel is Beaton's rich cast of characters: there's Toni, her blonde, attractive junior detective; Sir Charles, who pops in and out of her life at his convenience but who always seems to help Agatha when she needs it most; James, her ex, who treats her more like a buddy than a former wife; Roy, her former business associate who escapes London to seek Agatha's help with his professional problems; Bill Wong, the policeman who both admires and chastises Agatha as needed; and dependable and caring Mrs. Bloxby, the vicar's wife. The relationships are strong and intricate, and they add a lot of fun to each successive novel. As a longtime fan of M. C. Beaton --- and Agatha Raisin in particular --- I have to say that THERE GOES THE BRIDE really is one of the most fun novels in the series. As

M.C. Beaton does it again with another great read. Agatha Raisin can get into any difficulties that Ms. Beaton can dream up. A fun read for Agatha fans.

In a small village in the Cotswold of England, Agatha Raisin is getting more and more cases for her new detective agency. Overworked and needing a rest from her caseload Agatha takes a vacation visiting several of Europe's most famous battlefields. She goes to Istanbul to see the infamous Charge of the Light Brigade during the Crimea War. However, Agatha is horrified to see her former husband James Lacey and his much younger fiancée Felicity Bross-Tilkingtonare also there.town. James assumes the obsessive compulsive Agatha Raisin is stalking him as he also sees her a continent from home in the Gallipolis. Back in England, Agatha ignores his accusations and tries to ignore him too although the entire village is coming out for his second marriage. Agatha buries herself in her work while James waits for his bride to walk down the aisle; only to find her corpse with a bullet hole in it. The police suspect Agatha in a crime of passion, but she has witnesses that place her elsewhere. Felicity's stunned distraught mother hires Agatha to find out who killed her daughter as she distrusts the cops to do an adequate job once they fixate on a suspect; in this case Agatha in spite of her alibi. However, her investigation proves dangerous as someone wants to inter Agatha resting in peace next to Felicity. The twentieth Raisin cozy retains the amusing freshness and out of control fun of the previous entries as once again crotchety Agatha is her usual acerbic self with her ex, his fiancée, the cops, and returning sleuth Toni Gilmour. She is even acrimonious with her new love interest, Sylvan Dubois, a friend of Felicity's father; as she suspects both of them in some dubious activities. The whodunit is a wonderful puzzler, but as always in this fabulous series, fifty something abrasive, acerbic Agatha owns the story line a she verbally dishes out A SPOONFUL OF POISON to anyone who ventures nearby. Harriet Klausner