Agatha Raisin and the Potted Gardener [Mass Market Paperback]

Like many readers, I found Agatha Raisin to be irresistible as a character when she first appeared in Agatha Raisin and the Quiche of Death. Here was a blunt, high-powered, but lonely, woman who wanted to start a new life amid her fantasy of what life is like in a Cotswold village. Her pushy instincts in that book worked well (when employed to raise funds for charity) and backfired when aimed at self-promotion (entering a store-bought quiche in a baking contest). Where would M. C. Beaton take this fascinating character?

In Agatha Raisin and the Vicious Vet, Agatha began to overcome her tendency to pursue James Lacey, her handsome bachelor neighbor, enough to attract him as a sleuthing partner. With Bill Wong as her advisor in the pursuit of the proper male, can she learn to be more reserved?

Agatha Raisin and the Potted Gardener combines both perspectives into one story. Agatha returns from an extended trip to find that James Lacey seems totally taken with a beautiful incomer, Mary Fortune, who has looks, money, and the same gardening interests as James. Agatha is stirred into action and decides to become a horticulturalist. Naturally, she doesn't know the first thing about what she's doing. Despite a warning from Mary that a frost is coming, Agatha puts out her seedlings. The result is a bare garden. Will Agatha cheat again to get her way?

Before the story is over, there's another murder in Carsely and Agatha is immediately in hot pursuit . . . with James Lacey soon enticed into joining her investigation. Before she's done, Agatha even braves the Boggles (the hard-to-satisfy older couple who like free trips from Quiche of Death) to get information.

This story is a more complex character development than either of the first two books in the series. Agatha becomes much more nuanced in her perspectives and responses . . . and becomes more like a real person rather than a mystery book character. I was particularly pleased to see the careful development of Mary Fortune as a character. It is very well done and adds a lot to the story. Unfortunately, James Lacey is developed in only one dimension, a predictable one. He becomes a bit tiresome before the end of the book.

The mysteries in the book are pretty easy to solve which reduces the book's interest for those who like puzzles. But the crimes themselves are certainly imaginative and enrich the story.

The book's main weakness is that the motives and actions of the characters seemed a little off to me. They didn't quite ring true. See what you think.

Any Agatha Raisin fan, however, would be foolish to skip this book. It's quite entertaining.

Having been very disappointed in the last entry in this series (it was a complete rehash of the first book), I had almost decided not to buy this one, the third in the series, but I did and it is better than I had expected.
Agatha takes up gardening to get closer to James, her next door neighbor, but as usual, makes a complete hash of the effort and has to agree to return to London for 6 months to work for an agency in return for help getting her garden in shape before the village garden show.
The current main rival for her affections for James is murdered and she naturally must figure out who did it. It is rather easy to figure this mystery out but the writing was a little sharper than the previous book making it much more enjoyable.

I read this at someone else's urging, not being a regular devotee to the mystery genre, and I was pleasantly surprised. Agatha Raisin is delightful, sort of a middle-aged Bridget Jones with brains and business acumen. She rises above cute kookiness--her feelings and motivations are quite honestly rendered, though one would wish for her sake she would think before she opens her mouth or acts on some occasions. Most of the pickles she gets herself into are based in her crush on her neighbor, James Lacey, who compares to Mark Darcy of the Bridget Jones books. When the inevitable murder comes due, she and Lacey manage to work together until they solve the whodunit.

Beaton is a witty writer who turns a nice sentence. She makes satirical hay of the village murder mystery genre and the age-old theme of fish out of water (Agatha has taken early retirement in a Cotswold village, escaping momentarily from a high-powered London job.) The actual mystery is kind of poofy; James quietly nails it early on, but his observation is thrown away. It is obvious from the getgo who will be murdered, a rather inscrutable character who the author has set up with a variety of conflicting behaviors but never imbues with the psychological resonance that would explain or reconcile the behaviors. In other words, a cartoon. The obligatory red herrings don't fare much better. The villagers more than make up for this lapse in character definition, however.