Agatha has moved to a picture-book English village and wants to get in the swing. So she buys herself a quiche for the village quiche-making contest and is more than alarmed when it kills a judge. Hot on the trail of the poisoner, Agatha is fearless, all the while unaware, that she’s become the next victim …

In a nutshell:

I read it in: English

I liked it:     Very much

For people who like: Cosy mysteries, the Cotswolds, the English countryside, Miss Marple atmosphere with a tougher touch

My thoughts: 

This is the first book in the Agatha Raisin series. After reading some of M. C. Beaton Hamish Macbeth books I decided to give Agatha Raisin a try and I was not disappointed.

Agatha Raisin is not a very likeable heroine, at least not at the beginning. She is a tough business woman who usually gets her way by bullying and/or flattering others and that’s about all she can do. Being nice doesn’t come naturally to her. When she – very uncharacteristically – gives all the credit for a local charity event that she organized to a friend, she immediately regrets it when he benefits from her action.

Obviously she also does not learn any lessons from previous events. She buys a quiche to enter it into a competition, someone dies from eating it which gets her into an awkward position. However, a little later she has no scruples to take a cake from a communal freezer to offer it to someone as her own, even though she has no idea whose cake it is and what might be in it. She just does what gets into her mind, not considering any consequences.

This also brings me to another question. Don’t they have to keep retained samples from food at such occasions? That should be standard procedure on occasions like the competition or even the storage freezer! That way the mystery would have been solved a little earlier.

All characters in the village were interesting and entertaining, and the Cotswolds are a great setting for the whole idea of a hardened ex-PR agent trying to ingratiate herself with the locals. The whole story was a pleasure to read; humour, atmosphere and a cosy mystery all combined to a very nice package.

Oh, the cover! Isn’t that a lovely cover?I don’t read chick lit but always like those illustrated covers and fancy fonts. So I am more than pleased with the covers of these Robinson editions.

Location: The fictional village of Carsely, Cotswolds, England, UK

Product info and buy link :

If you click on the buy link above you will be taken to The Book Depository.co.uk. If you buy the book through this link I will earn a small commission. You can find my general affiliate links to The Book Depository, Amazon.co.uk and Amazon.com here.

Have you read this book? What did you think of it? I would love to hear other opinions.

Blurb:

Murder is a Tasty Dish. The most hated man in the most dour town in Scotland is sleeping with the fishes, or-more accurately-dumped into a tank filled with crustaceans. All that remain of the murdered victim are his bones. But after the lobsters are shipped off to Britain’s best restaurants, the whole affair quickly lands on the plate of Constable Hamish Macbeth.
Exiled with his dog, Towser, to the dreary outpost of Cnothan, Macbeth sorely misses his beloved Lochdubh, his formerly beloved Priscilla Halburton-Smythe, and his days of doing nothing but staring at the sheep grazing in a nearby croft.
Now the lawman has to contend with a detective chief inspector who wants the modus operandi hushed up, a dark-haired lass who has an ulterior motive to seduce him, and a killer who has made mincemeat of his victim-and without doubt will strike again …

In a nutshell:

I read it in: English

I liked it:     Yes

For people who like: the Highlands, cosy mysteries

My thoughts: 

I can’t say I was too thrilled with the murder method. Not that I ever am, mind you, but the corpse in the fishtank being completely eaten is rather unsavory. The whole idea has been done more tastefully (but maybe tasteful was not M. C. Beaton’s intention anyway) by David Wishart in Food for the Fishes.

All that aside, this time the setting was different again. Where in book one there were tourists to be questioned, in book two the local gentry, here they are hostile villagers. There is quite a surprising variety of characters in those books.

One word to Blair. Why this oaf is still leading the investigations is a mystery to me. Why do the “rival” police officers always have to be so mind-numbingly dumb and antagonistic. Instead of securing Hamish’s cooperation (after all, he has solved the last two crimes single handedly and made Blair look rather stupid) he gives him mundane tasks and does everything he can do be an ass. By rights he should have been sent packing after book two.

Priscilla is becoming more and more of a nuisance mystery. She turns up at the end of the book and acts kind of jealous because of another woman’s affection to Hamish. Of course, her own various fiancés and guys she drags up to Scotland are perfectly ok. Strange double standard. Can’t say I like her.

Location: The fictional village of Cnothan, Highlands, Scotland, UK

Images from wikipedia and sxc.hu user arinas74

Movie tip

Hamish Macbeth TV series

Product info and buy link :

If you click on the buy link above you will be taken to The Book Depository.co.uk. If you buy the book through this link I will earn a small commission. You can find my general affiliate links to The Book Depository, Amazon.co.uk and Amazon.com here.

Have you read this book? What did you think of it? I would love to hear other opinions.

Blurb:

When Priscilla Halburton-Smythe brings her London playwright fiance home to Lochdubh, the whole town is delighted — save perhaps for love-smitten bobby Hamish Macbeth. But the morning after a posh engagement party, one of the guests, Captain Bartlett, is murdered on a grouse hunt.
Unfortunately, the prime suspects are the party guests. And a second murder soon follows the first. Now Hamish Macbeth must cut through the alibis before the killer strikes again . . . all the while trying to woo the lovely Priscilla from her jealous boyfriend.

In a nutshell:

I read it in: English

I liked it:     Yes

For people who like: Very cosy mysteries, Scotland, the British upper class

My thoughts: 

This is the second instalment in the Hamish Macbeth series and this time we meet a few more locals. However, the locals are mostly gentry from the wider area, not so much the Lochdubhians (or whatever the inhabitants of Lochdubh call themselves).
I liked Hamish in the first book already, but now I like him even better. He really is Mr.Nice. Unfortunately, his sidekick, well, not really, Priscilla is not his sidekick but rather his crush, left a bad impression this time. Not only did she get engaged to a guy who she knew was a total prick, she also stayed engaged even though she realizes that they are not suited at all to put it mildly. And why? Because she doesn’t want to stand up to her parents! I hate women like that. Whining about their own weakness, but nevertheless not doing anything about it.
The mystery was a good one. It might be me but again I had no clue who the murderer was but was pleased with his/her identity. Hamish is a clever one indeed.
For cozy mystery lovers this series is a must read.

Location: The fictional village of Lochdubh, Highlands, Scotland, UK

Map from wikipedia, landscape by macleod from sxc.hu

Movie tip

Hamish Macbeth TV series

Product info and buy link :

If you click on the buy link above you will be taken to The Book Depository.co.uk. If you buy the book through this link I will earn a small commission. You can find my general affiliate links to The Book Depository, Amazon.co.uk and Amazon.com here.

Have you read this book? What did you think of it? I would love to hear other opinions.

Narnia…a land frozen in eternal winter…a country waiting to be set free.

Four adventurers step through a wardrobe door and into the land of Narnia – a land enslaved by the power of the White Witch. But when almost all hope is lost, the return of the Great Lion, Aslan, signals a great change…and a great sacrifice.

In a nutshell:

I read it in: English

I liked it:     Kind of yes, kind of no      

For people who like: fairy tales, fantasy, good vs. evil

My thoughts: 

This was the quickest read for me in a long time. I started some time in the morning and was done in the afternoon (including the usual family interruptions, I might add).  According to the target group the story was not overly complicated and extremely easy to follow.

I liked the general idea of the children discovering another world by entering a wardrobe, moving through fur coats and leaving through the back. But there were a few things I didn’t like at all.

• The mishmash of characters in Narnia that just didn’t go together. Giants, trolls, fauns, speaking beavers, satyrs, unicorns, centaurs, for me they don’t all belong into the same universe. What I found even more annoying was the appearance of Santa Claus. What on Earth does he do in a parallel fantasy world? And gives some useful gifts, too. Those gifts sounded more like fairy gifts than from jolly old Santa.
• The witch was mean, but stupid. She could have gotten more use out of Edmund after he came to her castle had she been a bit nicer. As it was she made him realize how wicked she really was and he turned against her. That wasn’t something I would have expected her to do. She should have kept up her sweet, deceiving personality a little longer.
• Aslan, well, that little trick he pulled was not very honourable. I didn’t care about the Christian aspects of that scene but what really annoyed me was that he betrayed the deal with the witch. He gave her his word (implied by his furious roar when she asked about whether she could trust the deal will be honoured) and then he comes up with the even older magic crap which the witch didn’t know about. Not fair! I admit he had to go through a fair amount of humiliation and yes, the witch would have not been honourable and honest either, but two wrongs don’t make a right (sorry about having to quote a commonplace here). Also this is not a very good example for children. I know something you don’t, so I can cheat on you easier. And that is ok, because you are evil and I am good. I didn’t like that. At all.

It was an ok start to the series as the children discovered Narnia together with me. I am curious to know what comes next. At the same time I am quite apprehensive. Will the series continue to give such dubious messages to its readers? The end justifies the means isn’t something I 100% agree with. We will see.

Movie tip

The chronicles of Narnia: The lion, the witch and the wardrobe

Product info and buy link :

If you click on the buy link above you will be taken to The Book Depository.co.uk. If you buy the book through this link I will earn a small commission. You can find my general affiliate links to The Book Depository, Amazon.co.uk and Amazon.com here.

Have you read this book? What did you think of it? I would love to hear other opinions.

This post is part of

my Narnia Reading Project 2012.

Isabel Dalhousie—the nosiest and most sympathetic philosopher you are likely to meet—now has a son, Charlie, whose doting father Jamie has an intriguing idea to pose to Isabel: marriage. But Isabel wonders if Jamie is too young to be serious? And how would Cat respond? On top of these matters, the ambitious Professor Dove has seized Isabel’s position as editor of the Review of Applied Ethics. However, nothing it seems can diminish Isabel’s innate curiosity. And when she recognizes that two paintings attributed to a deceased artist have simultaneously appeared on the market, she can’t help but think that they’re forgeries. So Isabel begins an investigation and soon finds herself diverted from her musings about parenthood and onto a path of inquiry into the soul of an artist.

In a nutshell:

I read it in: English

I liked it:     Yes      

For people who like: Edinburgh, Scottish isles, philosophy

My thoughts: 

Again, I totally loved Alexander McCall Smith’s style and find it almost incredible how he writes from a woman’s point of view. This is simply amazing, he must have studied women a lot.

Isabel is a mother now. has that mellowed her? Certainly not! She is her old meddling self and again her thoughts about people and her own actions diverge considerably.

Example: She thanks Jamie (the happy father) for not going away when he learned that she was pregnant. She did think it possible that he would prefer his freedom. OK, fair enough. However, only a few pages later she gets irritated when she realizes that people had speculated about whether Jamie would stay or leave. Now, if she herself wasn’t even sure about that, she can hardly blame strangers to wonder, can she?

Her getting involved is once more completely a matter of choice. This time I found her even a little conceited. She tells an expert at a gallery about her suspicion of forgery and even though she has even less clue how to proceed in the matter she still thinks she can do more than the gallery guy.

There are a couple more issues I have with her but I am not going into great lengths about it here (her dealing with Dove which could be called spite, especially since she had no proof for what was going on; her stance on assassinating a tyrant, considering her opinion about the death penalty). All these things are part of her personality and without them the books wouldn’t be as charming as they are.

The next two instalments are already waiting for me.

Location: Edinburgh and Jura, Scotland, UK

Images from Google maps and wikipedia (Barnhill by zilchy111 and Corryvreckan by Russ Baum)

Product info and buy link :

If you click on the buy link above you will be taken to The Book Depository.co.uk. If you buy the book through this link I will earn a small commission. You can find my general affiliate links to The Book Depository, Amazon.co.uk and Amazon.com here.

Have you read this book? What did you think of it? I would love to hear other opinions.

When society widow and gossip columnist Lady Jane Winters joins the local fishing class she wastes no time in ruffling feathers – or should that be fins? – of those around her.
Among the victims of her sharp tongue is Lochdubh constable Hamish Macbeth, yet not even Hamish thinks someone would seriously want to silence Lady Jane’s shrill voice permanently – until her strangled body is fished out of the river.
Now with the help of the lovely Priscilla Halburton-Smythe, Hamish must steer a course through the choppy waters of the tattler’s life to find a murderer. But with a school of suspects who aren’t willing to talk, and the dead woman telling no tales, Hamish may well be in over his head for he knows that secrets are dangerous, knowledge is power, and killers when cornered usually do strike again.

In a nutshell:

I read it in: English

I liked it:     Yes      

For people who like: very cosy mysteries, Scotland, lovely scenery, plots that don’t make your heart beat faster

My thoughts: 

After reading a couple of Isabel Dalhousie books I thought there is nothing more cosy out there, but I was wrong. This Hamish Macbeth book is even less nerve wrecking than The Sunday Philosophy Club series. Considering there was a murder in the first and nothing even close to petty theft in the latter this is no mean feat.  At the moment I am in the mood for some very easy and unexciting reading, so M.C. Beaton was just right for me.

I very much enjoyed the quiet setting in a Scottish village in the Highlands out in the sticks. Our hero, the village bobby, solves the crime and leaves his detective colleagues from the big city far behind. Hamish Macbeth is calm, apparently rather slow (don’t let appearances deceive you, he is rather witty and had some great comeback lines in this book) and easy going.

His love interest (unrequited, but then again maybe not altogether so) and her father, the local land owner, are just the stereotype characters you would expect, at least so far. She, down to Earth, independent thinker, turns down all suitable marriage candidates; the father, the loud, irate, “my daughter is too good for you” type. Perfect! We didn’t meet any other village people here as the plot revolves around a group of tourists who have come to Lochdubh for a week to learn the tricks of the casting trade. All the sleuthing and snooping is done among them, so there was not much room to get to know the locals.

The mystery was an ok plot, there were some hints as to the murderer, but I never knew who it was until the end. However, had it been more obvious, I wouldn’t have minded, this series clearly lives from the setting, the local characters, its hero and the atmosphere.

Great for light reading! There are many more books in this series and I am curious to read M.C. Beaton’s Agatha Raisin series as well. Thanks, Caroline, for pointing me to those books.

Location: the (fictional) village of Lochdubh, Highlands, Scotland, UK

Map from wikipedia, photos by chris1961 and brO at sxc.hu

Movie tip

Hamish Macbeth TV series 

Product info and buy link :

If you click on the buy link above you will be taken to The Book Depository.co.uk. If you buy the book through this link I will earn a small commission. You can find my general affiliate links to The Book Depository, Amazon.co.uk and Amazon.com here.

Have you read this book? What did you think of it? I would love to hear other opinions.

Rich supposedly mad lord gets together with rich widow for affair, but a police detective throws a spanner in the works. He wants the madman convicted for murder. 

I read it in: English

I liked it:     No , because the police officer was such a terrible person, obnoxious, pushy and insufferable; he spoilt all the fun for me. The two main characters were ok, but somehow they didn’t hold my attention and I was not really interested in how they were going to get together for good and/or how they got the detective off their backs.

For people who like: historical romance, an unusual hero, a down to earth heroine

Product info and buy link :

If you click on the buy link above you will be taken to The Book Depository.co.uk. If you buy the book through this link I will earn a small commission. You can find my general affiliate links to The Book Depository, Amazon.co.uk and Amazon.com here.

Have you read this book? What did you think of it? I would love to hear other opinions.

When friends from Dallas arrive in Edinburgh and introduce Isabel to Tom Bruce – a bigwig at home in Texas – several confounding situations unfurl at once. Tom’s young fiancée’s roving eye leads Isabel to believe that money may be the root of her love for Tom. But what, Isabel wonders, is the root of the interest Tom begins to show for Isabel herself? And she can’t forget about her niece, Cat, who’s busy falling for a man whom Isabel suspects of being an incorrigible mama’s boy. Of course Grace and Isabel’s friend Jamie counsel Isabel to stay out of all of it, but there are irresistible philosophical issues at stake – when to tell the truth and when to keep one’s mouth shut, to be precise – and philosophical issues are meat and drink to Isabel Dalhousie, editor of the Review of Applied Ethics. In any case, she’s certain of the ethical basis for a little sleuthing now and again – especially when the problems involve matters of the heart.

In a nutshell:

I read it in: English

I liked it:     Yes      

For people who like: Edinburgh, calm plots that don’t get the heart rate up, philosophical ponderings

My thoughts: 

God, Isabel Dalhousie really should chill out a bit. That woman thinks every little detail through as if it was a decision of life and death. She wants to come to morally impeccable decisions and yet again she often fails.

Example: She wants to buy a flat from a woman who is eager to sell it to her because she likes the thought that Isabel and Jamie are living there together.  She got a wrong impression about the two and Isabel thinks it is unfair to accept the very generous offer based on a misconception. She wants to buy the flat for Grace and she and Jamie are not a couple at all. So she goes and tells the seller’s lawyer that she does not intend to live there with her young man. But then she claims that even though they are living apart she IS in a relationship with Jamie. A blatant lie, made because she doesn’t want sympathy from the married lawyer who might feel sorry for the poor spinster Isabel. Of course, she immediately regrets having said it, but where has all her pondering taken her? She just made it worse.

Isabel constantly feels pressured into getting involved in other people’s affairs because she has this odd theory about moral proximity. When she sits next to a person at a garden party she feels she then has a moral obligation to help that person with whatever problem they might have. If she makes eye contact with someone it puts her into a position of moral obligation towards that person (as seen in “The Sunday Philosophy Club” already). Give me a break!

Her friendship with Jamie has evolved into more now, and as you can imagine, that causes quite a bit of distress as well. Heaven forbid that Isabel just plunges into a relationship/affair with a man 14 years younger without agonizing over it for weeks.

Cat’s reaction to the fait accompli of the relationship was surprising to say the least and throws a very bad light on her in my opinion. I liked her up to that point but her open hostility was rather unpleasant to watch.

All in all, Isabel Dalhousie makes her own life so complicated it’s not funny anymore. But entertaining nonetheless.

Location: Edinburgh, Scotland, UK

Photos by stuart_sib & stevieb5 at sxc.hu

Product info and buy link :

If you click on the buy link above you will be taken to The Book Depository.co.uk. If you buy the book through this link I will earn a small commission. You can find my general affiliate links to The Book Depository, Amazon.co.uk and Amazon.com here.

Have you read this book? What did you think of it? I would love to hear other opinions.

Blurb:

Over thirty-five years ago, Gordon Meyers, an aspiring writer with a low number in the draft lottery, packed his belongings and reluctantly drove away, leaving Glenna Rising, the sexy, sharp-witted med student he couldn’t imagine living without.

Now, decades later, Gordon is a former globetrotting consultant with a grown son, an ex-wife, and an overwhelming desire to see Glenna again. Stunned when Gordon walks into her Manhattan office, Glenna agrees to accompany him for a drink. As the two head out into the snow-swept city, they become caught up in the passions that drew them together before tearing them apart. And as the evening unfolds, Gordon finally reveals the true reason for his return.

In a nutshell:

I read it in: English

I liked it:     Yes      

For people who like: the 60s, bittersweet love stories  

My thoughts: 

This story starts right before Gordon steps into Glenna’s office. It is a good beginning and immediately you realize that both people still have feelings for each other. Unfortunately, as so often the case with me, I very soon took sides in this story and decided I didn’t like Glenna very much. This happened already in the first flash back where Gordon goes back to the 1960 right before he meets Glenna for the first time. I can’t put my finger on why I took a dislike to her, but later on there were situations where I really thought Gordon should move on. Some of the things she did (even though they might make perfect sense to her) I just wouldn’t have done. So for me reading this was a lot like being angry at Glenna.

The plot moves back and forth between now, in the evening when Gordon and Glenna meet again after 35 years, and the 60s when they were a couple and very much in love. But soon clouds appear in the blue sky and eventually the relationship ends. I can’t say I was particularly sorry about this.

Anyway, 35 years later, things have changed for both, and they now are able to start anew. And, since I am not a complete bitch, I was happy for them.

Even though I had my misgivings about one of the protagonists, I enjoyed reading this very much. It just flowed and I did want to know why Gordon had come back and whether he and Glenna will find together again. If you like the  time period of the 1960s and everything that goes with it, this is perfect for you.

Location: New York City, N.Y., USA

Images from wikipedia. Map by M. Minderhoud

Product info and buy link :

If you click on the buy link above you will be taken to The Book Depository.co.uk. If you buy the book through this link I will earn a small commission. You can find my general affiliate links to The Book Depository, Amazon.co.uk and Amazon.com here.

Have you read this book? What did you think of it? I would love to hear other opinions.

OK, it’s January at last and I want to get started on reading Narnia this month. I decided to go with the order of completion which is again a little different from the publication order. In both cases, however, “The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe” comes first. 

This is how it goes:

1. The lion, the witch and the wardrobe
2. Prince Caspian: The return to Narnia
3. The voyage of the Dawn Treader 
4. The horse and his boy 
5. The silver chair 
6. The magician’s nephew
7. The last battle

Who else is going to read in that order and who is planning on starting this month? Please, remember, we have a discussion page for each book where I also posted some questions from the reading group guide at Harper Collins. You can find the links to the pages either on the Narnia project page or in the drop down menu at the top of this blog.

Let’s get started!