Agatha Raisin

Agatha Raisin is a fictional detective in a series of mystery novels by Marion Chesney using the pseudonym M. C. Beaton. They are published in the U.K. by Constable & Robinson and in the U.S.A. by St. Martins Press.

Raisin has been played by Penelope Keith on BBC Radio 4, and by Ashley Jensen in the television series Agatha Raisin. The pilot aired on Sky 1 in December 2014. A full 8-part series has been filmed during 2015, and will be aired on Sky 1 in April 2016.

Character

Agatha Raisin is a frustrated, yet endearing, middle-aged public-relations agent who moved from London to Carsely in the Cotswolds when she sold her public-relations firm in Mayfair and took early retirement. She solves murders in each of the earlier books, but in the fifteenth book Agatha Raisin and the Deadly Dance (2004) Agatha sets up her own detective agency. The police, and even some of her acquaintances, insist that she solves crimes through accident and luck.

In the first book, Agatha Raisin and the Quiche of Death (1992), Agatha is 53, but does not age as the series progresses, nor do any of the other characters (Tony Gilmour remains 18, for example). She was born Agatha Styles in a tower block slum in Birmingham to Joseph and Margaret Styles, both unemployed drunks living on benefits and occasional bouts of shoplifting. She went for one glorious week on a rare family vacation - her parents preferred going to a casino/holiday camp, and she never forgot that golden holiday or the beauty of the countryside. Agatha went to the local comprehensive, then saved enough from her biscuit factory wages to run off to London. After an evening secretarial course she worked as a secretary in a public relations firm, moved into public relations work and saved enough to start her own firm.