Cooking and food are so much a part of many cozy mysteries that culinary cozies are their own subgenre. (Maybe the choice of “Raisin” as a surname for her character was a nod to this by the author, as she deliberately made her a non-cook.) Home cooking is one of the homespun, homebody virtues that Agatha thinks she is going to develop now that she’s retired from city life. Indeed, she bought a collection of cookbooks and has every intention of becoming the best cook in the village – when she can find the time. Meanwhile, she relies for her meals on pub food and, if the pubs are closed, frozen, single-serving entrees heated up in the microwave.
Holier-than-thou home cooks who would consider it beneath them to serve a microwaved entree are just one of many groups of people that the Agatha Raisin books poke fun at. A lack of cooking skills is something Agatha is alternately embarrassed about and doesn’t give a damn about. In addition to eating greasy pub food too often, her other bad habits include smoking, consuming alcohol, casual sex, dessert, swearing, self-aggrandizement, and white lies. The author said in an interview that she had an “ongoing irritation with political correctness.” The character of Agatha Raisin is both irritable and irritating. Finding her endearing requires a real effort of will that at first only the saintly Mrs. Bloxby, wife of the stuffy village vicar, can make.
I just found out that the author Marian Chesney died last month at the age of 83, so it looks like the last Agatha Raisin book might be #30, Beating About the Bush, published in December.
I’m only on #7, Agatha Raisin and the Wellspring of Death, so it will be a while before I have to say goodbye to Agatha Raisin.
The New York Times obituary reports that the idea for the first Agatha Raisin book, Agatha Raisin and the Quiche of Death, came to her when her son’s school requested some of her “home baking” for a fundraiser and she didn’t want to let her son down so she bought a couple of quiches and put them in her own wrapping. I would never have the nerve to pull something like that off, so maybe that’s why I admire the feisty Agatha and the crisp, no punches-pulled writing style of author M.C. Beaton.
In honor of Agatha Raisin, check out the winning recipes of the Great New England Quiche Cookoff. If you’re a talented home bread baker, you may want to look up the details of how to enter this year’s contest: The Great New England Savory Free-Form Bread Competition, sponsored by King Arthur Flour and Red Star® Yeast. (No fair buying a loaf from a bakery or copying a recipe off of the Internet!)
Happy Weekend Cooking!
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