Agatha Raisin and the Busy Body (2010)
Written By M.C. Beaton
Constable Press
6.5 / 10
Opening Sentence and First Paragraph -
Having found that her love for her ex-husband, James Lacey, had more or less disappeared, Agatha Raisin, middle-aged owner of a detective agency in the English Cotswolds, decided to hit another obsession on the head.
I'm a believer in the open sentence being one of the main ingredients of a story. It's this section that should grab the reader and enthuse them to read on. In this book, the above opening is pretty decent, it sets the scene, tells you some of Agatha's background and makes you wonder what her other obsession is. Since I'm a newbie, not only to M C Beaton but also the Agatha Raisin series, this opening sentence set me up nicely for the unfolding story.
The story flows along at a steadily fast pace and the writing is never dull or boring. For such a short book (only 244 pages), there's plenty going off, which for me slightly handicaps the story, because you have to loose other components to the tale; in this case characterisation.
There are a lot of incidental characters in the book and I know it would've been clogging to the narrative to give them all better characterisations, and some of them the reader would know if they had read the series from the start. It would've been better had a few more of the important characters was filled out more. Such as they were, there was no empathy created between myself and them so I didn't care about their outcome in the story. Which is a shame as it would have made the story stronger.
This isn't really a whodunnit novel either as there are no clues for the reader to try and ascertain who the killer is; it's a step by step progress of Agatha Raisin and her detective team in their search. That said, I did figure out who the killer was. I accredit this to M C Beaton's writing style. When you get to the scene where you meet the killer you just know they did it.
That said, these negatives are only small things, as there are a couple of twists that aren't deducible or guessable. There's also a murder which may be solved in later series books.
In conclusion, this is a well-written book, though it could have been a little more in depth to bring the reader more into the story. At times, it seems a little over-stuffed, but it just stays on the right side of "too-much". I did enjoy this book and read it through in just three sittings, though I'm not sure if I would read any of the other books in the series.
I'm a believer in the open sentence being one of the main ingredients of a story. It's this section that should grab the reader and enthuse them to read on. In this book, the above opening is pretty decent, it sets the scene, tells you some of Agatha's background and makes you wonder what her other obsession is. Since I'm a newbie, not only to M C Beaton but also the Agatha Raisin series, this opening sentence set me up nicely for the unfolding story.
The story flows along at a steadily fast pace and the writing is never dull or boring. For such a short book (only 244 pages), there's plenty going off, which for me slightly handicaps the story, because you have to loose other components to the tale; in this case characterisation.
There are a lot of incidental characters in the book and I know it would've been clogging to the narrative to give them all better characterisations, and some of them the reader would know if they had read the series from the start. It would've been better had a few more of the important characters was filled out more. Such as they were, there was no empathy created between myself and them so I didn't care about their outcome in the story. Which is a shame as it would have made the story stronger.
This isn't really a whodunnit novel either as there are no clues for the reader to try and ascertain who the killer is; it's a step by step progress of Agatha Raisin and her detective team in their search. That said, I did figure out who the killer was. I accredit this to M C Beaton's writing style. When you get to the scene where you meet the killer you just know they did it.
That said, these negatives are only small things, as there are a couple of twists that aren't deducible or guessable. There's also a murder which may be solved in later series books.
In conclusion, this is a well-written book, though it could have been a little more in depth to bring the reader more into the story. At times, it seems a little over-stuffed, but it just stays on the right side of "too-much". I did enjoy this book and read it through in just three sittings, though I'm not sure if I would read any of the other books in the series.
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