Agatha Raisin and the Vicious Vet

Living in the English Cotwolds and ready for some romance and excitement in her life, amateur sleuth Agatha Raisin gets more than she had bargained for when the charming yet sinister new veterinarian is murdered.

The author of the estimable Hamish Macbeth mysteries falters with this second story (after Agatha Raisin and the Quiche of Death ) to feature London PR executive Agatha Raisin, who has recently retired in the Cotswolds. When handsome veterinarian Paul Bladen dies from a drug injection intended for a horse, Agatha decides it was murder and calls on her bachelor neighbor James Lacey to help investigate. Although her friend, Detective Sgt. Bill Wong, believes the death was an accident and cautions her against overdramatizing life in their village, Agatha proceeds . She discovers an angry former client of the vet whose cat had died at his hands and claims she has information about Bladen. But when Agatha shows up for their meeting, the woman is dead; another accident, suggest the police as Agatha cries murder once more. Pursuing men and clues with abandon, Agatha finally ferrets out the murderer but loses her male quarry in the process. Stretching for charm, Beaton here unexpectedly scants characterization and plot--both of which are amply supplied in Constable Macbeth's Scottish Highland adventures.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Fifty-ish Agatha Raisin, the author's amateur second-string sleuth (Hamish MacBeth being the pro), has yet to feel comfortably settled in the Cotswold village of Carsely, where neighboring bachelor James Lacey eludes her romantic overtures and life is dull (Agatha Raisin and the Quiche of Death, 1992). The arrival of handsome vet Paul Bladen, however, provides a new object for the chase--until he dies of an injection meant for the horse he was about to operate on. Agatha is sure it was murder, not accident, and sets about talking to everyone who had dealings with Bladen, most of them women he was conning out of money for a never-to-be- built veterinary hospital--a scheme his partner, Peter Rice, seemed unaware of. Lacey, bored with the military history he's trying to write, joins in Agatha's detecting forays--proving to be considerably more adept than she. A second death and the kidnapping of Agatha's cats lead her, solo, to a near-fatal meeting with a killer. Clumsy plotting, a clutch of listless characters, and the singularly charmless Agatha Raisin--in one of Beaton's least attractive outings. -- Copyright ©1993, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Still on break from her Hamish Macbeth series, Beaton adds to her Agatha Raisin opus ( Agatha Raisin and the Quiche of Death , St. Martin, 1992). Constantly shunned by the man next door, Agatha turns her attention to the handsome new veterinarian--only to become involved in investigating his suspicious death.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.