Kissing Christmas Goodbye (Agatha Raisin Mysteries, No. 18) | M. C. Beaton

Kissing Christmas Goodbye (Agatha Raisin Mysteries, No. 18) | M. C. Beaton | Agatha is at war with youth, middle age, and men

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Kissing Christmas ...

	Kissing Christmas Goodbye (Agatha Raisin Mysteries, No. 18) M. C. Beaton St. Martin's Minotaur, 2007 - 240 pages average customer review:based on 22 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

-----Agatha dreams of a perfect white Christmas-----

With KISSING CHRISTMAS GOODBYE, M.C. Beaton gives us an exceptionally good story that is not only filled with details of Agatha's life, but also contains an interesting mystery!

Agatha Raisin has a rich dream life. In most of her dreams she does wonderful things and her friends admire and love her. She especially relishes the love of her former husband, James Lacey. This time Agatha is planning on having a wonderful Christmas dinner party where the food and decorations are excellent and her guests are full of admiration and love for her.

In the mean time, she has her detective agency to run. She needs another employee to work on the missing pet problems and hires a teenage girl named Toni. Toni proves to be even better than Agatha could have imagined. The young woman is smart and has a great deal of incentive. Agatha is, of course, jealous of Toni's youth, beauty and brains, but knows she's hired a good detective.

The agency's biggest case involves a very wealthy woman who is murdered before she could cut all of her children out of her will. All of Agatha's detectives get involved in the investigation including her friends Sir Charles Firth and Roy Silver

Judith Miller

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Agatha is at war with youth, middle age, and men

With her Cotswold sleuthing business booming, Agatha Raisin needs help so she hires teenager Toni Gilmour to conduct the pet recovery portion of detective work. Toni's enthusiasm makes Agatha feel old and tired as the youngster never needs a break while her employer feels like a middle age prune rather than a raisin.

Wealthy Phyllis Tamworthy sends a letter to Agatha asking for help because she believes at least one member of her family, if not all of them, wants to kill her. Agatha and her friend Sir Charles Fraith travel to Phyllis's manor house on the pretence of attending the matriarch's eightieth birthday celebration. Before they can talk, Phyllis dies from hemlock poisoning used as a dressing in her salad. Ignoring the fact that she no longer has a paying breathing client, Agatha investigates the family and the history of the deceased.

In her latest thriller, Agatha Raisin is at her usual acerbic sarcastic best as she expands her investigative agency to include a teenage employee. Much of the fun in this tale comes from comparing the enthusiastic friendly youngster with the middle age shrew, as Agatha is not aging gracefully. Readers will appreciate the cleverly designed whodunit that as often brings out the worst in the lead character as it does her better qualities. Fans will enjoy Agatha's war with youth, middle age, and men (of course), all wrapped inside a difficult to solve murder mystery due to the myriad of family members with motives and opportunity.

Harriet Klausner

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Joy to the World

I enjoyed this book immensely. I had a few chuckles. This is an easy to read, quick, fun, enjoyable mystery that once you pick up you don't want to put it down. Hooray for Agatha Raisin, a middle aged but full of life woman. I have read the whole series and was a little worried that Agatha was wearing thin, but this was definitely right on track where it should be

a paticularly satisfying Agatha Raisin installment

I wholeheartedly concur with the previous reviewers: this particular Agatha Raisin installment is a good one.

It's beginning to look as if the bloom has fallen off Agatha Raisin's obsessive love for her handsome ex-husband, James Lacey. Not that Agatha is about to admit to this. No. she's decided that her feelings if ennui are down to the lack of a really good investigation that she can sink her teeth into. So that when Agatha receives a letter from Phyllis Tamworthy who claims that someone in her family is trying to murder her. Agatha thinks that Phyllis Tamworthy may be a nutter, but something about the letter gives her pause. What if it is authentic? What if Phyllis Tamworthy is in real danger? With visions of Agatha Christie's "Hercule Poirot's Christmas" in mind (Christmas is after all round the corner), Agatha decides to take on the case. Isn't just typical then that all of Agatha's Christie-like visions would come to nothing? Phyllis turns out to be penny-pinching bully to comes her children firmly under her thumb, while Phyllis' children seem to be so colourless and spineless a bunch, that Agatha has a hard time seeing any of them as potential killers. But when Phyllis drops dead after a truly awful tea, Agatha is sure that a very cunning murderer has struck. Quickly Agatha springs into action, determined to discover who murdered Phyllis, and no one, not the hostile police officers in charge of the case or Phyllis' equally hostile relatives or the twinge in her hip are going to stop her...

While the last few Agatha Raisin installments have not been exactly topnotch, "Kissing Christmas Goodbye" will remind fans of the Agatha Raisin installments that shone. Our prickly and acerbic Agatha is in top form as she juggles trying to figure out who murdered Phyllis, sorting out her latest employee's domestic problems and obsessing about giving her friends a truly spectacular Christmas dinner. I enjoyed every single moment of "Kissing Christmas Goodbye," and am truly delighted at being able to recommend it as a good read not only to fervent fans of the series but to anyone looking for a nice British cozy to curl up with. As to the perennial question: how will things pan out for James and Agatha? This installment moves neither backwards nor forwards in answering the question. There are intimations that Agatha may no longer be in love with James; but can we believe this? I'm not too sure and will look to the next Agatha Raisin installment for answers!

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A great Agatha Raisin

I am a long-term fan of Agatha Raisin and M.C. Beaton. I eagerly await any of her new books, and I particularly looked forward to this one because of the Christmas theme. Each time out we see Aggie getting stronger and doing better and better with her detective agency. In this book she is called in to protect an old lady who thinks her family is out to kill her. And boy does she ever discover a family! It turns out the old lady is not what she seems and the family has been suffering under her matriarchship for a long time. It's really no surprise when the old lady turns up dead, and then Aggie sets out to unmask a killer. We have all the old favourites here, James Lacey, Charles Fraith, Mrs. Bloxby and Bill Wong, as well as some new winners like young Toni who Agatha hires as a junior detective. This book was lots of fun and then a big Christmas dinner was thrown in for good measure.

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reviews: 1, 2, 3, page 4, 5

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