|
[ Home ]
[ About | Reviews | Search | Submit ]
This Christmas, Agatha Raisin has abandoned her previous, thwarted, attempts to create the all-out, roasted goose, plum pudding celebration and takes off instead for Corsica, which, she discovers, is closed for the season and rainy. Fleeing home to the traditional pleasures of Carsely, she discovers that none of the usual seasonal decorations are on display. No Christmas tree on the the church tower, no lights in the village high street, and even the churchyard is taped off as a hazardous site. The source of all this gloom is not the looming recession or a sudden access of Grinchiness on the part of the villagers, but one man, John Sunday, Health and Safety Officer with the Mircester Board. Mr Sunday sees hazards lurking everywhere - lampposts insufficient to support wreaths, ladders too unstable to permit workers to rig fairy lights safely, tombstones all too likely to topple and hurt someone passing by, even private householders prevented from stringing their usual garish Christmas lights out of considerations of safety, not taste. So it is no surprise when the officious officer is stabbed just outside a meeting called to protest his interference. The chief (indeed only) suspect hires Agatha and her detectives to clear her name, but before they can, she herself is found dead. Her suspicious departure will be but the first in a string of subsequent killings and murderous assaults that will remain unsolved for almost a year. By the time the year is out and Christmas has come round again, Agatha is unusually weary. I have to confess that I got tired of the whole business rather sooner. There is a peculiar off-hand, perfunctory quality to the narrative that makes it hard to engage with the characters and the book is not sufficiently tightly plotted to amaze or amuse. Hard-core fans of Agatha Raisin will probably be happy to get BUSY BODY in their Christmas stockings, but it is not a good choice to introduce someone new to the series. § Yvonne Klein is a writer, translator, and retired college English professor who lives in Montreal.
Reviewed by Yvonne Klein, December 2010
[ Top ]
QUICK SEARCH:
Contact: Yvonne Klein (ymk@reviewingtheevidence.com)
[ About | Reviews | Search | Submit ]
[ Home ]
| 
