Agatha Raisin and the Walkers of Dembley

Oh, Agatha, how I love thee. You are the snarkiest. I can tell that you care deeply what others think of you, but am entertained by the gull in which you tell them to bugger off.
I am glad to see things progressing with James. I think that it helps that you don't appear as desperate as you once did. It is nice to see you soften a bit, but I truly hope you don't lose to much of yourself.
Your latest case was quite the mystery. I certainly couldn't figure it out with all of the interestingly wacky suspects who were involved. Well done!

I'm unusual in that I like the aggressive Agatha Raisin more than the lazy, unambitious Hamish MacBeth. This one is as good as the others in the series -- although the first one, Agatha Raisin and the Quiche of Death, is the best.

I suspect I liked the first book best because James Lacey played so little a part of it. The biggest mystery in this book, as in all of the them, is what lively, clever Agatha sees in the priggish James Lacey. He's a snob and a pill. There are women who think they're nothing without a man -- even one as boring as Lacey -- but Agatha certainly doesn't strike me as one. I blame M.C. Beaton for Lacey, and I hope he can be bumped off next in order to put us all out of our misery.

Oh, Agatha, how I love thee. You are the snarkiest. I can tell that you care deeply what others think of you, but am entertained by the gull in which you tell them to bugger off.
I am glad to see things progressing with James. I think that it helps that you don't appear as desperate as you once did. It is nice to see you soften a bit, but I truly hope you don't lose to much of yourself.
Your latest case was quite the mystery. I certainly couldn't figure it out with all of the interestingly wacky suspects who were involved. Well done!

In the fourth of the series, we meet a local rambling group whose leader is a woman who enjoys confrontations. She regularly insists on leading the group on pathways that are technically public, though they go through private property, thereby giving her an excuse to fight with the landowner. So it isn't a surprise that the woman is found buried in a field, this one owned by Sir Charles Fraith. Agatha and James Lacey are drawn into the investigation, with their hot and cold relationship becoming serious.
This one has way more hook-ups than you'd expect.

This outing flows along like most of the Agatha Raisin books, although this time Agatha and her neighbour (and possibly love-interest) James Lacey team up and move temporarily to a village to solve a murder pretending to be a married couple. Romance is in the air in more ways than one, and the end of this book set up an interest question for the next book to come.

4 stars
This was the funnest of the four books in the series that I’ve read. I just love it when you get into Agatha’s head.

She had fantasized about there being only one bedroom. James would sleep on a cot-bed on the floor. "God, this thing's uncomfortable," he would moan. "I wish I had that nice double bed to sleep on." And Agatha would say huskily, "Why not join me?" And he would, and then, and then...

But the best scene in the book for me was when Agatha had the melt down in the pub while James was eating with the sexy librarian. Then an angry James gets a phone call, telling him what a great actor Agatha is, and he thinks he has misjudged her. I was LOL all over the place, glad I was reading someplace private people would have show more thought I lost my mind. show less

Cosy murder-mystery audio to help me drift off to sleep. Agatha & James pose as a married couple to discover a murderer. She is funny & sharp, but I wish she would set her cap at someone more worthy than indifferent, critical
James