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Title: Agatha Raisin: Pushing Up Daisies

Subtitle: Agatha Raisin Series, Book 27

Author: M. C. Beaton

Narrator: Penelope Keith

Format: Unabridged

Length: 6 hrs and 22 mins

Language: English

Release date: 09-20-16

Publisher: Audible Studios

Ratings: 4.5 of 5 out of 5 votes

Genres: Mysteries & Thrillers, Modern Detective

Publisher's Summary:

Allotment wars! Lord Bellingham, Carsely's biggest landholder, has enraged locals by saying he is going to sell off their allotments to make way for a new housing development. So when he turns up dead, poisoned by antifreeze, nobody mourns his passing.

On another fine summer's day, Agatha visits Carsley's allotments, where everything looks peaceful and perfect: people of all ages digging in the soil and working hard to grow their own fruit and veg. Agatha feels almost tempted to take on a strip herself...but common sense soon prevails. She doesn't really like getting her hands dirty.

She is introduced to three old-timers who have just taken over a new strip; Harry Perry, Bunty Daventry and Josephine Merriweather are lamenting the neglected condition of the patch. But as Harry starts to shovel through the weeds and grass, his spade comes across something hard, so he bends down and tries to move the object. And then he starts to yell....

The body is that of Peta Currie, a newcomer to the village - but who would want to murder her? Blonde and beautiful, she's every local male's favourite. And then Lord Bellingham's son engages Agatha to do some digging of her own, and very soon Agatha is thrown into a world of petty feuds, jealousies and disputes over land. It would seem that far from being tiny Gardens of Eden, Carsley's allotments are local battlefields where passions - and the body count - run high!

Critic Reviews:

"Sharp, witty, hugely intelligent, unfailingly entertaining, delightfully intolerant and oh so magnificently non-PC, M.C. Beaton has created a national treasure." (Anne Robinson)

"M.C. Beaton's imperfect heroine is an absolute gem." (Publishers Weekly)

Members Reviews:

Pushing fans' loyalty to the limit

I thought the last couple of novels in this series (The Blood of an Englishman; Dishing the Dirt) were rather too frenetic, with outlandish plots, and with Agatha a thin caricature of her former self, sizing up every new male that she meets as a possible mate. That feeling is even more intense in this new one, where plot, motive and character seem to have gone to the wall in favour of pure 'activity', with Agatha and Toni separately driving endlessly from one location to another in search of a lead. (A lead to what? Who knows, as I forgot the so-called plot lines after Chapter Two.) So this story becomes just a dizzying cavalcade of slightly eccentric characters who enter, say their bit, and depart. It feels like a clutter of small vignettes pasted together into a hastily-assembled novel. As narrator, Penelope Keith is a wizard at instilling character and wit into each new voice, but even she has her work cut out attempting so many different people.

This lack of cohesion and apparent rush allows some silly mistakes to creep in, such as a main character's eye colour changing from 'hazel' in Chapter 6 to 'blue' in Chapter 7, and Sir Charles Fraith being referred to as a lord (by Mrs Bloxby, no less).

The biggest sadness in all this frantic coming-and-going is the loss of the charm and pace of the earlier novels. Agatha spends no time at all in her home village of Carsely other than to hunker down after another exhausting day on the road.