Agatha Raisin And The Day The Floods Came (2003) - Plot & Excerpts
Trying to escape the misery Agatha Raisin experiences after her failed marriage to James Lacey, she spontaneously books a trip to Robinson Crusoe Island on the other side of the globe. There she meets some lovely Spanish-spoken people, but also a rather odd honeymooning couple. Blessed with the instincts of the true amateur sleuth, Agatha Raisin senses there's something quite sinister about the groom. However, she is on holiday, she needs to lick her wounds and find a way to move on from her divorce, so she lets it go without doing any of her usual investigations. When she returns home to her cottage in Carsley in the English Cotswolds, Agatha receives an email from one of her holiday chums and learns that young bride they had met was found murdered soon after the holiday party left - and the groom turned out to be the murderer.Back in Carsley, Agatha is shocked to find how much she has let herself go and decides on drastic action. She joins a Pilates class, has her hair done and gets some beauty treatments. While in Evesham at the beauty salon, she sees a young woman with her beaux. The girl and boy remind Agatha of the young couple on Robinson Crusoe Island. Something "waiting" in the demeanour of the young man seems to indicate there's danger lurking in the lives of this soon-to-be-married couple.And then all of these thoughts are wiped from Agatha's mind, because after weeks of rain the whole area is flooded. She joins other onlookers on a bridge to watch the torrent below only to discover to her horror that a corpse is floating by. A blonde bride still in her wedding dress, clutching a bouquet of white roses stares up at her with unseeing eyes. Agatha realises with a jolt that this is the young woman from the beauty salon.Naturally, Agatha must find out what happened to the young bride and sets out on her usual bungled attempts to investigate a murder. This time it is nearly her last adventure, for against the advice of her friend Mrs Bloxley, the wonderful wife of Carsley's grumpy vicar, Agatha throws caution to the wind and enters the final stages of the investigation on her own, without the back-up of Charles Fraith, her one-time lover and amoral aristocratic friend, and without the protection of her new neighbour John, the asexual and slightly robotic crime writer.This instalment in the Agatha Raisin series of murder mysteries is perhaps the saddest of the lot. Being a 50-something myself, I feel for Agatha and her failed attempts to find a degree of happiness and affection. In a society that ridicules women purely for having had the audacity to grow old, finding love is virtually impossible. No longer young, one is ignored and humiliated on all fronts and becomes invisible to the opposite sex. A thorn in the eye of virtually every other single woman one meets, a 50-something like Agatha has her work cut out not to despair and become a hermit.The men in Agatha's life are without exception horrible, spineless, amoral and selfish creeps, clearly far below her. Yet, M C Beaton's heroine Agatha is so deeply flawed herself that the reader can understand why it might be hard to love Agatha, a woman who's in her early 50's on the outside but an often silly 17-year-old romantic on the inside.Having read many of M C Beaton's highly entertaining murder mysteries with amateur sleuth Agatha as head of the investigations, I long to see Agatha at least once meet a nice man who treats her with affection and respect, despite her age and wrinkles. Yep - I'm also a hopeless romantic and any woman reading this will burst out "no such man exists!"
This is only my fourth Agatha Raisin book but I’m afraid that I am becoming tired on her constant whining over her advancing age and physical attractiveness (or lack thereof). I do realize that this book is #12 in the series and follows the departure of James, her now ex-husband, who left her to join a monastery (of all things) and the marriage of her latest paramour to another woman. One can understand that she might be a bit lacking in the self-esteem department and the fact that she signs up for Pilates classes and undergoes a beauty over-haul are understandable actions as is her get-away vacation to Robinson Crusoe Island…….but all that incessant kvetching about men, her looks, her age and her love life begins to wear a bit thin. Upon returning from her island trip torrential rain and flooding strike her village and Agatha sees the body of a young woman clothe in a wedding dress floating down the river. She recalls the woman from an incident that occurred during her visit to the beauty salon the previous day and, being Agatha, feels she has carte blanche to investigate the girl’s death. As usual, she is warned by the police “not to interfere” with their investigation…….a warning she promptly dismisses.The usual characters are all here as well as a couple of new ones like John Armitage, a successful mystery writer, who has conveniently moved into the house next door and is thereby available to assist Agatha with her investigation as well as play a part in her romantic fantasies. The mystery itself if pretty simple and the police are predictably obtuse. On the plus side, there are a couple of amusing sequences like Agatha’s vaulting into the bushes while trying to evade on oncoming vehicle and being mistaken for a drunk when she staggers out of her hiding place. Objectively speaking, this is an unremarkable addition to this cozy series with a few amusing scenes and comments that elevate it from humdrum to adequate.
What do You think about Agatha Raisin And The Day The Floods Came (2003)?
This is my third AR mystery, and unless I find another buried somewhere in my stash, it will be my last AR book forever. Reading AR is kinda like waking up to find a hideous, hairy mole growing on your face, and knowing that nothing you do will ever disguise it from being the disfiguring monstrosity it is. That's the first book. By book/day two you've decided to pluck out the offending hairs and think maybe the mole isn't quite as bad as you originally thought. By book/day three, when you check the mole, you begin to convince yourself that maybe it isn't quite so bad. Maybe it lends a little character to your appearance. By the end of book/day three you realize the mole/book is maybe not as bad as you thought, but it's still pretty terrible and should be removed permanently. That sums up AR mysteries for me: large hairy moles that can be altered to be more acceptable but ultimately are still terrible and embarrassing. There were two redeeming factors for me in The Day The Floods Came. One was when Agatha's friend reveals that he was given information by someone named "Boofy Pratt-Rogers". Any author who can come up with a name like that cannot be all bad. The second revelation was an old Russian proverb which states, "The fish always rots from the head down." The rest of the book involves characters from other AR books, none of whom seem to have changed much from the first series book I read, as well as a whodunit that is pretty transparent rendering most of the book as filler until the not-so-great-or-surprising final reveal. The ending itself is simply a mish-mosh of the emotional travails of a very insecure, very annoying, rude middle aged woman. I wouldn't recommend this series to anyone, but I can't say I'm sorry I read it. After three of these things, I just had enough.
—Gabby
All right, I've probably read too many Agatha Raisin books lately. She got a bit irritating this time at the end when she decided to just go ahead and search things at the end without notifying the police. I think her character made a bit of a regression there, while prior to this book, I'd been thinking that Beaton had done a pretty good job of maintaining some good character development over a long series.Then again, I'm pretty disappointed with the direction her love life is taking as well and her complete lack of understanding of how people perceive her.Also, these books are a good lesson in how our world would be if people just said what they were thinking all the time, no matter how mean or thoughtless. Interesting that it's only really the female characters acting in that way though which is also a bit of a problem. The women are bitchy and rude, the men are cold and heartless.
—Erin
Agatha back on track after her ex husband is supposedly in a monastery, she is back in her home in the village and has a new neighbor who she mistakes for a Morman with a bible in his hand coming to her door. Agatha goes on a vacation to a remote island and has a short adventure but is now bored but not for long as she is back on the trail of a murderer who has killed and dumped the body in the river in her wedding dress. Agaatha disgues herself and interviews co workers of the murdered girl. Agatha also makes friends with her handsome neigbor but that does not turn out how she hopes. Book is an easy and fast reading book and I look forward to the next in the series
—Ann Boytim
