Antiques Flee Market by Barbara Allan

This is a funny book. To me, the humor had more to recommend it than the story itself.  

The two main characters, Brandy and Vivian Borne are both in psychotherapy.   They are off-the-wall funny.

When someone kills a local collectibles dealer, the police accuse his hippy-like granddaughter.

Then they accuse a town character, a veteran with PTSD of the sort that causes him to retreat to a cave in a nearby state park and fight the war again.

Finally Brandy and Vivian (mostly Vivian) solve the case.  Brandy learns a lot about herself and her small town.

As with most small towns, gossip, evil, and even murder are rooted in community history.  Everyone knows everyone, and everyone has either something to hide or a role to play.

When I talked to my wife about this book, she said, "Silly is not bad.  Everybody needs to read some silly books."

This book would qualify.  It was fun to read.

Sunday Quote

Sunday, December 20, 2009


What you do to other people, you do to yourself--that's the converse of the Golden Rule.
                --Advice given to Lew Archer

Money, Money, Money by Ed McBain

Some things Christmas doesn't touch.

Drug transactions, counterfeit money, several double crosses--all these things are immune to Christmas.  Christmas only heightens the depression of a cop who is struggling with PTSD.

This complex story begins with drug running and closes with terrorism.  And in a strange way, all of it connects.

A couple days ago, I commented that this story is the opposite of the Christmas classic, Dickens' "A Christmas Carol."

While Dickens shows that doing good brings more satisfaction than always seeking after wealth and power, this story shows that despite Christmas or any other motivation, many seek for wealth, power, and control--Money, Money, Money. 

When I set out to read Christmas mystery stories this year, I remembered my favorite writer, Ed McBain.  He has written several 87th Precinct stories set at Christmas.  This is the one I fastened on for this Christmas season.

And it is "classic" McBain, a straight, but complex, story about familiar people, even a character I don't much like, Fat Ollie.  In fact, in this story, Fat Ollie saves Carella's life two or three different times.  But what really saves Carella's life is a change of heart, a late understanding that we don't have anything more valuable than love and family.

If he hadn't found that in this Christmas-New Year time, he might well have eaten his gun. 

So Christmas and the new beginning which the News Year brings do play a part in this story.  The horrible things which happen in Isola during the season (a lion eats one woman), cause Carella to understand what really matters.

I didn't think this was Ed McBain's best book.  I'll tell you more about which one I think is the best some other time.  But in its own odd way, this book was faithful to the message of the Christmas-New Year season. 

Christmas Mystery Stories

December 17, 2009

This edition of the blog "In Reference to Murder" refers its readers to another blog which lists Christmas mystery stories.  There are a bunch of them, more than I would have guessed.  (When you go to the "Mystery Fanfare"  blog which has these lists, you will have to page down and go to 'older posts' to get the complete list.)

And this isn't all of them.  Right now, I'm reading a book which isn't on the list, Ed McBain's Money, Money, Money.  The book is set during the Christmas-New Year holiday.  McBain makes it clear that the spirit of Christmas doesn't touch certain parts of the underground world of Isola, McBain's fictional city.

Also, this year I will probably go back and reread Dickens' "A Christmas Carol."  Most of Dickens' writing involves social commentary. 

With the situation being what it is, even in the United States right now, this story seems especially relevant.

So, for me, Christmas reminds me again of poor parents, the woman with child, making their way at the behest of the government, to be counted. 

They will never have much, this little family, but their son, with his message of peace and love to all people, will change the world.

So, our lives are not primarily about "money, money, money."  They are about family, social justice, systems which treat people fairly.  They are about the joy in loving and caring.  They are about how those who seek peace help the world find peace.

You'll hear more from me before Christmas.  I'm still reading Christmas mysteries.  But until then, may you feel the blessing of this season in the week leading up to Christmas.

Shakespeare's Christmas by Charlaine Harris

The Lily Bard stories are billed as hard boiled cozies, and that is what this one is.

The murders are real, not just the setting for a puzzling story, and the crime behind it all is one of the most horrendous in a mystery writer's repertoire.  


Lily leaves the small town of Shakespeare, Arkansas, to go back to her hometown of Bartley.  She is to take part in her sister's Christmastime wedding.  She does not look forward to an extended time with her dysfunctional family.  


Then someone brutally murders a local doctor and his nurse.  Lilly and her boyfriend PI Jack Leeds solve the murder and its surrounding crimes. 


The juxtaposition of the shallow social goings on of the wedding with horrendous crimes and violence makes for an unusual story--part cozy with a focus on women's concerns, and part something much more chilling.


Lilly's relationship with Jack is real, filled with ups and downs, and touched with love.  


Always in the background is Lily's own terrifying previous experience, a story I take to have been told in a earlier book.


To find Christmas, Lily has to return to Shakespeare.


So this is a hard boiled cozy with a Christmas setting.  The real story is the story of long-term abuse which leads to murder.

----
This Christmas season, I continue my reading of mysteries with a Christmas setting. 

Sunday Quote

Sunday, December 13, 2009

 The worst is so often true.

    Miss Marple

Holiday Grind by Cleo Coyle

Finally!  A Christmas mystery story that actually has to do with Christmas. 


Cleo Coyle's Holiday Grind coffee house mystery ends up centering around a passage from Dickens' A Christmas Carol.


At the close of the book, Coyle sites a passage from the classic Dickens story.  Scrooge looks out on the miserable spirits of the unhappy misers who spent their lives in selfishness.  About those spirits,  Dickens writes: "The misery with them all was that they sought to interfere, for good, in human matters, and had lost the power forever. . . ."   Now that they were in a situation where they understood that the most powerful force in life is love (as opposed to massive greed), they could not act on what they learned.


The Holiday Grind story  begins with a friend of Clare Cosi, owner of the Village Blend Coffee House, being killed.  As it turns out, Alf Glockner, the Santa who works for a local charity taking his sleigh around to solicit donations at Christmas, is not a perfect person.  But he is trying to reform his life as the Dickens story suggests he should.


The story in this book is complex.  Clare's boyfriend, a New York City cop, is working on his own case.  There are several murders, all of which come as a result of people seeking more and more money and fame.  

And Clarie is not immune from the violence. Murderers to kill her, not once, but twice.  The second time the murderer tries to kill Claire's daughter too.  


To blandly state the overall message in the story (as I have done),  makes the story seem too goody-goody.  In actuality, it has everything a good cozy reader could want--a unique setting (the coffee house and the surrounding New York City milieu), Clare's love interest and the ups and downs that involves, some humorous scenes, and a complex story which brings a closing surprise.  


And just to top it off, it has recipes and other interesting comments at the end.


This is a typical cozy, not always believable, but upbeat and the kind of story that keeps you guessing to the end. 

I'm glad I found it in this Christmas season.

The Waves Keep Coming

December 9, 2009

You can't stop a tsunami.  This story from The Los Angeles Times marks another step in a whole wave of changes in electronic publishing.

Like it or not, things are changing in the publishing industry.

Sunday Quote

December 6, 2009

The terrorist and the policeman 
both come from the same basket.

A Christmas Grace

"A Christmas Grace" is the second of two novellas in Anne Perry's book Silent Nights.  


Set in 1895 in the village of Connemara in Western Ireland, "A Christmas Grace" involves a mission of mercy.  Emily Radley spends Christmas with her dying Aunt Susannah whom she hasn't seen since Susannah became estranged from the family for marrying an Irish-Catholic.


Connemara has a poisonous secret.  Several years ago, someone in the small town killed a washed up sailor who took refuge there.  The sailor became privy to some of the town's secrets.


Emily solves the crime as she and others tend to Susannah.


For me, the major blessing in this story was in the physical descriptions.  Perry sets the scene, describes the Irish  countryside, in a compelling way.  


This is another story of the impact of an outsider.  In this case the outsider is an English Protestant woman, about as outside as you can get in Ireland in the 1890's.


I didn't think this story was as tightly written as the first story in the book, but I can sure see how Anne Perry understands small towns.  


I often object to the way mystery stories portray small towns. All my life, I lived and ministered in small towns.  Too many writers choose them for settings without knowing how they work.



In this story, being an outsider is something that you hide, even if you have to kill to do it.


I enjoyed this book, my first foray into the writing of Anne Perry.


Because of my special interest in small towns and the way they work, and because she is a very good writer, I will probably read more Anne Perry.

Another Man's Moccasins by Craig Johnson

I have at least three more books to read.


This book took my breath away.  


It involves two interwoven stories.  Walt Longmire's memories of his time in Vietnam are triggered by the murder of a young Vietnamese girl in now-Sheriff Longmire's Absaroka County, Wyoming. 

Both stories make for compelling reading.


The stories intertwine.  The backstory at the heart of the crime is both real and evil.  The characters are compelling, both the ongoing characters and the ones Longmire meets along the way.  


If you read this book, I defy you to forget Virgil White Buffalo.


I read this book in twenty-four hours, a sort-of-record for me. 


This is the fourth in the Longmire series.  I plan to go back and read the other three in order and then to reread this one.  The story in Another Man's Moccasins is complex and interwoven.   I seldom reread a book, but I look forward to rereading this one with more understanding of the ins and outs of the intricate plot. 


I ran across this book the Friday after Thanksgiving in a remainder store in the Lake of the Ozarks.  I bought the book (and several others) on the chance I might like it. The books are inexpensive enough that if you can't read them through, you haven't lost much.  


Well, this time, I struck gold with Another Man's Moccasins.  For the life of me, I can't visualize why they would have had any left to sell so cheaply.

A Christmas Beginning

"A Christmas Beginning" is the first of two novellas in Anne Perry's Silent Nights: Two Victorian Christmas Mysteries.


Scotland Yard Superintendent Runcorn, on vacation on the island of Anglesey off the Coast of Whales, finds the sister of the local vicar murdered.  


Runcorn is an outsider in the village, though he has had contact with some of the villagers before.  


This is a novel of manners.  It begins with a scene in the church which defines each person's standing in the community.  The local constabulary cannot effectively investigate because there are too many social mores in the way.


In other words, Victorian small towns are like today's small towns, at least in their closed ways and in the way their evil is beneath the surface, coated with supposed gentility.


Runcorn, being an outsider, can crash through all this, and he does, kind of like a clumsy customer in a high-priced antique store.


This is also a love story.  The only woman Runcorn has ever loved in a romantic way is inaccessible to him, way out of his class.  The question is: Will he get the girl? 



I enjoyed this book for what it was.  I had never read Anne Perry before.  She is a skillful writer who (from I've read) has written a series of Christmas mysteries. 

The Gift of Murder

This book is a gift in two ways.  It is an anthology of holiday crime stories from which all the proceeds go to Toys for Tots.


But it is also a book with a lot of good stories in it.  


From a story about two little shoplifters who learn  lessons on Christmas eve, to a story about a Werewolf at Christmas, this book has a well-written variety of short stories.


Take your pick.  If you want a story about a woman who kills Santa or a story about the New York Chinatown mob, you can find it here.


I first read about this book on The Drowning Machine, but it has been featured on several other blogs as well. 


If you want to do yourself and Toys for Tots a good turn, buy this book.

Sunday Quote

November 29, 2009

Lydia said sharply:

"No! Evil is not only in one's mind.  Evil exists!  You seem to have no consciousness of the evil in the world.  I can feel it.  I have always felt it--here in this house . . ."

Hercule Poirot's Christmas by Agatha Christie

Count on Agatha Christie to see the dark side of Christmas.


In a short letter which prefaces this book, Christie writes, "My dear James . . . You complained that my murders were getting too refined--anaemic, in fact.  You yearned for a 'good violent murder with lots of blood'.  A murder where there was no doubt about it being murder!


"So this is your special story--written for you.  I hope it may please.  Your affectionate sister-in-law, Agatha."


And that's what she provides.  This is the story of Simeon Lee, a malicious old man who gathers his feuding family around him in his castle-like mansion at Christmas.  


Being the malcontent he is, he arranges for them to overhear a conversation with his lawyer in which he says he intends to change his will.  


Add into the story a couple of almost-strangers--an as-yet-unmet granddaughter and the son of a former business partner, along with the rest of the long-feuding family, and you have what would naturally make for a murderous Christmas.


When someone murders Lee, the family calls the police, along with Hercule Poirot, to solve the murder.


I'd forgotten what a firm grasp Christie has of evil.


She often hides her intimate understanding of human nature in the puzzle-like quality of her stories, but if you look closely enough, real human evil is almost always there.



At one point, an admiring character says of Poirot, "Yes. You know, it was really amazing the way everything fell into place when he explained it."  And another replies, "I know.  Like when you finish a jig-saw puzzle and all the queer-shaped bits you swear won't fit in anywhere find their places quite naturally."


But the truth is, it wasn't the puzzle which appealed to me in this story.  It was the almost unadulterated evil Simeon Lee unleashed in his family at Christmas. 


I am often bored (or find fantastic and fail to believe) Agatha Christie's puzzles.  But her grasp of evil is something I can understand. What a brilliant (and probably troubled) woman she was!


This book's copyright is 1939.  I found it interesting to read seventy years later.

A Highland Christmas by M.C. Beaton

M.C. Beaton's 1999 A Highland Christmas is not a murder mystery.


It is a smaltzy Christmas story about how Hamish Macbeth investigates the theft of a cat and some Christmas lights.


Smaltzy is OK with me at Christmas.  This is a nice story except that Macbeth turns away the ideal love interest for someone who isn't even there.  That, and some people act in ways I can't believe they would ever act.  Abusive parents, for example, change their ways, and they do it without even having seen the ghosts of Christmas past, present and future.  (In other words, only Dickens can pull off that kind of a change.)



One element I especially enjoyed.  The story portrays the irrational prejudices religious groups have for one another.  That seemed very real to me.


So, if you are looking for a shortish, uplifting book, you will probably like this story.  But if you're looking for murder, go elsewhere.

Christmas is Murder by C.S. Challinor

Was it Mr. Mustard in the library with the candlestick?


This book is the old game of Clue in book form.  The author even reminds you of that.


"A real-life game of Clouedo might be fun," Charley agreed.  "Was it Clifford in the kitchen with the canedlestick, or --"


With everyone shut in Swanmere Manor during a Christmas snowstorm, the group watches as some person or persons kills one visitor after another.  


Barrister Rex Graves solves the crimes.  He has returned to the manor he knew in childhood (now an exclusive guest hotel) for Christmas.  He  renews acquaintance with the owner, has a very light love encounter with one of the women who is also visiting there, and solves the mystery.

Copyrighted in 2008, this book is an old-fashioned cozy with modern references to such things as the Iraq War and George W. Bush.  It is a blend of old and new. 



This cozy couldn't be more traditional.  It has a list of characters at the front, sections where Rex lists the clues, and a gathering of all the suspects for the denouement at the end. 

The book received starred reviews from magazines such as Booklist showing that such books still have a strong  host of followers.


Along  the way, Rex and others make the obligatory mentions of Agatha Christie and her major works.



This book was exactly what it claimed to be.  I enjoyed it.  

If you like well-written, extremely traditional kinds of cozies, you might want to try this book at Christmas.

Sunday Quote

November 22, 2009

Law is where you buy it in this town.

Sanctuary

At the end of Ken Bruen's Sanctuary, the narrator, Jack Taylor, says, "The church has ways of covering up that would make the Guards seem like amateurs."


Just a little later, he says, "...one way or another, the Church crushed anything outside their control."

This book has a chilling villain, created, in part, by the church.  


When you have a strong drive to justice, and you can't find justice in the religious institutions you should trust, you can be destroyed.  In that way, this insane killer and Jack Taylor have something in common.  


Many of the Taylor books deal with religious abuse.  The sad thing is, the abuses are believable.  And, in his own way, Jack rages against the abuses.



Jack works hard to destroy himself.  His drinking and drugging return in Sanctuary, probably making him better able to function, or, at least, able to function at all.  But there is a little healing too, a little more connection with his few friends.  At least, I hope so.


I think I read somewhere that there's another Jack Taylor book coming out soon.  I'm looking forward to seeing Jack's story continue.

The Smell of the Night

Originally published in 2001, Andrea Camilleri's The Smell of the Night deals with a Bernard Madoff-type ponzi scheme.   

A crooked investor makes off with people's money, billions of lire.  Inspector Montalbano investigates and finds the principals murdered.

I picked up this book because it was cheap.  It added just enough to a Christmas gift order to get free shipping.  

And of course, I enjoy Inspector Montalbano.  One of the first things he does when he learns of the ponzi scheme, is that he thinks of a situation in which he has made an investment.  He gets it in his head that his investment (for a struggling friend) has been lost in the swindle.  

Of course, the investment he is thinking about hasn't come anywhere near the Madoff-ponzi-schemer. But that doesn't keep Montalbano from stewing until finally he can trace things back.


That may seem to be such a silly thing, but it is so Sicilian (or, at least, so it seems to me).  Having come from a Sicilian father myself, and having inherited a lot of the Sicilian personality (as far away from it as I am), I truly understand.  If I had a nickel for each time I've made up a problem which doesn't exist, I'd be rich.

That's a trite thing to say, but it is true!

So I love Montalbano.  He explains a lot about me.  

And the stories are good stories too, not exceptional, but very readable about interesting people.

As with so much of my reading, I stumbled on Montalbano through a blog.  I have been well rewarded by the two books I've read so far.  There are a lot of the Montalbano books, I think.  I will probably try to read them all. 

--------
Extra note: Stephen Sartarelli translates the books.  Without him, I couldn't have read the books.  These books are wonderful to read.  I get the feeling the translator is a master translator.

Sunday Quote

Sunday, 
November 15, 2009 

"The front you like to project--nothing gets to ol' Jack Taylor.  Me, I see you different.  I like you.  Sure, you're a pain sometimes and God knows, you got a mouth on ya.  But bottom line, you're that rarity, you're a decent human being."

The Blight Way

I find these stories to be fun.


In Patrick F. McManus' The Blight Way,  Blight County, Idaho, Sheriff Bo Tully sets out to solve the murders of three strangers in the county.  During his investigation, he finds another murder and an underlying crime, all of which tie back to Blight County. 


The real joy of this story is in the mildly-humorous ensemble cast.  Everyone from Bo's father, the former sheriff, "Pap" Tully, to the pet spider behind the file cabinet in Bo's office plays a part.   

The Blight Way is a way of solving crimes without resorting to such finery as warrants (at least until after the fact).  Pap raised Bo on The Blight Way. Bo still uses it when he can get away with it.


This book is simple narrative.  The story begins with the murders and goes straight through.  There are no flashbacks or multiple points of view.  It is just one day after another until, in a few days, Bo solves the crime.  


For me, in this age of so many ways of coming at a story, this straight narrative is refreshing.  


I've read two Bo Tully stories now.  I find them enjoyable, fun to read, not deep or excessively violent, very much based in small towns of the sort I've known all my life (though Bo's area is more rural).



I'll read more books about Bo Tully.

Cross

I struggle  with the unending bleakness of the books in the Jack Taylor series.  But I find the books compelling, nonetheless.  That's the way it was with Ken Bruen's Cross. 

In this book, Jack tries to find the killer of a crucified young man.  At the same time, he deliberately avoids seeking the killer of his surrogate son, Cody, because he thinks he knows who that is.  He sees a kind of terrible tit-for-tat in Cody's murder, though it tears him apart.  


Taylor's strange relationship with the Lesbian policewoman Ridge continues. 



All this makes for an excellent book, one I found to be among the best in the series. 

They Were Just People: Stories of Rescue in Poland During the Holocaust

"Those people who helped me, I just have no words for it.  Probably saints from God.  How a mother could have the courage, the guts, the inspiration to risk the life of her five children.  Herself maybe.  But five children?"
   Felix Zandman


I have few words about this book.  Not everyone acted out of good motives.  Some took money.  They were poor and they needed it.  Some became involved in hiding Jewish refugees almost by accident, and once involved, they could find no way out.  Some gave their lives for what they chose to do.



One thing the Bible teaches us.  People's stories are sacred.  Given human evil and the providence of God, we relive the Exodus again and again. 


They Were Just People: Stories of Rescue in Poland During the Holocaust by Bill Tammeus and Rabbi Jacques Cukierkorn is more than well worth reading.  It is another chapter in the story of the Exodus.

A Rumpole Christmas

Horace Rumpole is idealistic.  He is always talking about how people are not guilty until a jury of their peers has declared them so.  It is not the role of the police, the judge or the barrister to make the judgment of guilt.  That judgment belongs to the jury.


In one of the stories in John Mortimer's A Rumpole Christmas, Mortimer writes: "It was only, it seemed, Rumpole who stuck to the old-fashioned belief that the most outrageous sinner deserves to have his defense, if he had one, put fairly and squarely in front of a jury."


In the final story, "Rumpole and the Christmas Break," Rumpole defends a Muslim "terrorist."  


At the close of the story, he says, "The terrorist got a fair trial.  And the whole truth came out in the end.  The day when a suspected terrorist doesn't get a fair trial will be the day they've won the battle."


Talk about heavy idealism disguised in seemingly innocuous Christmas murder mysteries!


I enjoyed this short book of five Christmas stories.  Reading it was a good way to begin my Christmas reading season.

Sunday Quote

Sunday, November 8, 2009




Integrity is not a conditional word.

The Double-Jack Murders

This is the first Sheriff Bo Tully book I've read.


In The Double-Jack Murders, an escaped psychopathic killer tires to kill Blight County, Idaho, Sheriff Bo Tully while Tully solves the 1927 murders of two prospectors.


This is a quick read, straight narrative (more so than any book I've read for a long time), and a simple story.  That's what attracts me. 


Tully's crew abounds with interesting characters.  The book ends with a twist.


Patrick F. McManus isn't shy about leaving parts of the mystery unsolved.  In a way, that seems natural.  Life is like that.


So, I recommend the book.


--------
I came to the book through a review on Lesa's Book Critiques.

Midnight Fugue

Reginald Hill's Midnight Fugue is an excellent book in an excellent series.

Aside from solving the crime, the major issue is, "Will Superintendent Fat Andy Daiziel be able to be top dog again?"

Coming back off a horrendous injury in a huge explosion, he finds himself left out.  At the beginning of the book, he is befuddled.
 
Is Andy's reign over, or can he can he get his powers (and authority) back?


"Listen, Andy," said [his deputy] Pascoe seriously, "I can't let you do this.  It's just a matter of minutes . . . "


"Minutes might be all  we've got," said Dalziel.  "And, Pete, what's all this letting business?  There'll likely come a time and place when you can tell me what to do, but it's not here and it's not yet.  I'm off.  You coming or staying?"



The personal issues are wrapped in a good story.  Gina Wolfe, the young fiancée of a police acquaintance of Dalziel's, asks Dalziel to find out whether her policeman husband, missing now for seven years, is still alive.  Someone has sent her a picture making her believe he could be.


Dalziel asks a young policewoman, Shirley Novello, to cover his back, to make sure someone is not recording Dalziel's and Gina's conversation.  Novello ends up witnessing a murder and being seriously hurt.   Andy had her doing what she was doing off-time and without telling any of his colleagues. 

The investigation comes to involve some powerful people with shady pasts.  

The book ends with everyone converging on the scene of another murder in the making.  

The book closes with justice in the form of a total surprise.  


In other words, for me at least, this was good reading.  


Hill changes points of view, moves from character to character and (slightly) back and forth in time.  That slows down the action.  As I recall, it is typical of these novels.  The action is important, but the people even more so. 


Hill portrays Ellie Pascoe, Peter Pascoe's wife, in an especially convincing way.  She loves her husband but hates that he is a policeman.  She is a wonderful minor character.


This investigation, like all the others, is a team effort.  Dalziel and his associates work together (not always harmoniously) as they have in other books.  Dalziel himself describes the plot:

"And the organist [at the church] were practising his Bach this morning: 'Art of the Fugue'.  My   favourite.  Tha knows what a fugue is?  Bit of a tune that chases itself round and round till it vanishes up its own arsehole."


What more could you want than a book like this?

Sunday Quote

Sunday, November 1, 1009

How much easier life would be without love, she thought. The Holy Joes are forever preaching that it's love that makes the world go round.  It isn't.  It's love that stops the world in its tracks.  Be faithful in love, they tell us, and all will be well.  Travel with love in your heart, and you'll never walk alone.


They're right.  You'll have a shadowy companion, invisible only at the moments of greatest ecstasy, but otherwise constantly present.  His names are fear and loss and pain.


One way or another, love always betrays.

Ellie Pascoe remembering how she felt
when she heard that her policeman husband

had been involved in a potentially life-threatening explosion.

There Goes the Bride

Sometimes I wonder why I enjoy M. C. Beaton's Agatha Raisin so much.


She is so self-obsessed.  If she weren't totally surrounded by good, competent people, she would have been killed several times in this book.


It all begins with the murder of Agatha's ex-husband's fiancée on their wedding day.


From there the book winds through international intrigue with murderers coming at Agatha from several sides.  And, as always, Agatha's obsession with men drives the plot.  She picks them up one after the other without discrimination, but that's just Agatha Raisin.  As far as I remember, she has always been that way.

She always wants to be the star of the show.  Jealousy almost overwhelms her when her young assistant Toni has her picture in the newspaper.  Agatha feels Toni is stealing the show.


They all need each other.  Without Agatha's driving force, the detective agency falls apart, but without her trusty sidekicks, the whole thing wouldn't work either.


And, for me at least, all of it is great fun.


Only once in the years I've been reading Agatha Raisin books has a book disappointed.  (Don't ask me which one.  I don't remember.)


Agatha Raisin is so much fun.  May she continue to bumble along for years to come.

---------
PS Over the years I've purchased all my Agatha Raisin books through The Mystery Guild.  That's where I bought his one.