A Spoonful of Poison, by M.C. Beaton, $24.95. Agatha Raisin, who took an early retirement from a successful public relations career in London to live the quiet life in a thatched cottage in the Cotswolds, early on found village life stifling without something to occupy her energies and eventually settled on a second career as a private detective. Her agency is flourishing, she has finally gotten over her ex-husband, and all seems well.
But she’s Agatha Raisin, who’s always at the mercy of her hormones, and when she meets handsome widower George Selby, organizer of a church fete she’s been asked to promote, she finds herself once again helplessly about to fall in love.
The fete is spoiled when several jars of preserves in the jam-tasting booth turn out to be laced with LSD, resulting in the deaths of two village women, and Agatha not only has a lot of damage control on her hands but a new case — finding out who was responsible.
With considerable help from her young (and very pretty) assistant Toni and various other employees and friends, all of whom understand Agatha far better than she does herself, she not only solves the puzzle but also manages to avoid an entanglement with George, who turns out to be anything but suitable husband material.
Beaton makes the particular brand of gentle social satire she excels at look so easy that she doesn’t always get the credit she deserves for her books, which offer not only sharply observed characters of all ages against a convincing background of modern village life but also are always well-plotted and gracefully written. Long live Agatha Raisin.
Rainstone Fall, by Peter Helton, $25. When a savage autumn windstorm knocks off large pieces of Chris Honeysett’s roof, the struggling artist-cum-private-detective decides it’s time to take another case, this time a boring surveillance assignment for an insurance company convinced that a claimant is faking his injuries.
We have a very soft spot in our heart for Chris, who will remind readers more than a little of Jonathan Gash’s Lovejoy — he’s kind, generous, cheeky and always in some kind of trouble, usually of his own making. He shares his ramshackle house in the country outside of Bath with another artist, Annis Jordan, who also periodically shares his bed and is one of his best mates, along with Tim Bigwood, a reformed safecracker who also occasionally enjoys Annis’ favors (which is getting to be a sore point with Chris).
The surveillance turns out to be both boring and unproductive, but it’s enlivened when a couple of teenagers confide in Chris that they overheard a murder being planned, and when it does take place, the victim is found in Chris’ wrecked Citroen.
Before you know it, Chris has also been contacted by a woman whose son has been kidnapped and whose abductors will work only through him. Soon Chris, Annis and Tim are off on a series of wild adventures, working well outside the law but on the side of justice, although the Bath police, with whom they have frequent run-ins, somehow fail to see that.
Not only has Helton created a terrifically engaging trio of characters, but he also takes them and the reader along for an exciting ride, enriched with entertaining dialogue, sardonic wit and a wonderful sense of place. This is the third book in a largely overlooked series, and we hope it will get the attention it deserves.
Blood Alone, by James Benn, $24. Billy Boyle, as readers of this well-executed series know, is a former Boston cop and a distant relation of Mamie Doud Eisenhower, which is why when he traded in his blue uniform for a khaki one he became a special investigator for Gen. Dwight Eisenhower, or Uncle Ike, as Billy calls him.
Billy has handled some pretty sensitive cases, but this one is a doozy: He has been commissioned to persuade the Sicilian Mafia to cooperate with the Allies during the invasion of Sicily, bearing a message to the local don from none other than Lucky Luciano.
The only problem is that, as the book opens, Billy has no idea who or where he is, much less what his mission is. He’s suffering from a form of amnesia triggered by a traumatic event he, of course, can’t recall, and his first task is to stay alive long enough to regain his memory. Gradually he does, and he eventually is reunited with some of his comrades in arms. What they find goes beyond Billy’s original mission: They also must stop a deadly counterfeiting ring led by a mutinous Mafia kingpin.
Billy, whose Irish roots have taught him a thing or two about family ties and loyalties, comes to understand the hold that the Mafia has in Sicily and even earns the respect of some of its leaders. But while he’s recovering his identity, he’s plagued with self-doubt, until he finally rediscovers his purpose in life. He is still the cocky kid from Southie, but he grows up quite a bit in this adventure.
Tom and Enid Schantz are freelancers who write regularly on new mystery releases.
