Agatha Raisin and the Day the Floods Came (Agatha Raisin Mysteries, No. 12)
Agatha Raisin and the Day the Floods Came (Agatha Raisin Mysteries, No. 12) book cover

Agatha Raisin and the Day the Floods Came (Agatha Raisin Mysteries, No. 12)

Mass Market Paperback – Box set, October 19, 2003

by
Price
$23.03
Publisher
Minotaur Books
Publication Date
ISBN-13
978-0312985868
Dimensions
4.1 x 0.69 x 6.86 inches
Weight
4 ounces

Description

"Beaton's Agatha Raisin series¿just about defines the British cozy."-- Booklist "A true village mystery with a heroine so timely and real, you'll want to meet her at the pub."-- St. Petersburg Times "Funny, breezy, and very enjoyable."-- Midwest Book Review "[Agatha] is a glorious cross between Miss Marple, Auntie Mame, and Lucille Ball, with a tad of pit bull tossed in. She's wonderful."-- St. Petersburg Times "Anyone interested in a few hours' worth of intelligent, amusing reading will want to make the acquaintance of Mrs. Agatha Raisin."-- Atlanta Journal Constitution "Few things in life are more satisfying than to discover a brand new Agatha Raisin mystery."-- Tampa Tribune Times "Beaton has a winner in the irrepressible, romance-hungry Agatha."-- Chicago Sun-Times "The Miss Marple-like Raisin is a refreshingly sensible, wonderfully eccentric, thoroughly likable heroine¿a must for cozy fans."-- Booklist "Anyone interested in¿intelligent, amusing reading will want to make the acquaintance of Mrs. Agatha Raisin."-- Atlanta Journal Constitution "The Raisin series brings the cozy tradition back to life. God bless the Queen!"-- Tulsa World "[Beaton's] imperfect heroine is an absolute gem!"-- Publishers Weekly -- From the Inside Flap She's prickly, thin-skinned and totally intriguing. Critics love Agatha Raisin! "[Agatha] is a glorious cross between Miss Marple, Auntie Mame, and Lucille Ball, with a tad of pit bull tossed in. She's wonderful."- St. Petersburg Times "Anyone interested in a few hours' worth of intelligent, amusing reading will want to make the acquaintance of Mrs. Agatha Raisin."- Atlanta Journal Constitution "Few things in life are more satisfying than to discover a brand new Agatha Raisin mystery."- Tampa Tribune Times "Beaton has a winner in the irrepressible, romance-hungry Agatha."- Chicago Sun-Times "The Miss Marple-like Raisin is a refreshingly sensible, wonderfully eccentric, thoroughly likable heroine...a must for cozy fans."- Booklist "Anyone interested in...intelligent, amusing reading will want to make the acquaintance of Mrs. Agatha Raisin."- Atlanta Journal Constitution "The Raisin series brings the cozy tradition back to life. God bless the Queen!"- Tulsa World "[Beaton's] imperfect heroine is an absolute gem!"- Publishers Weekly Agatha Raisin and The Love from Hell "Among the many joys of all Agatha Raisin adventures are Beaton's sweetly formal prose and her vivid descriptions of colorful villagers. This one, however, adds a crackerjack plot and a delightfully comic ending to the mix, making it clearly the best of the lot."- Booklist (starred review) Agatha Raisin and The Fairies of Fryfam "Witty...[a] highly amusing cozy."- Publishers Weekly "Agatha is as fractious and funny as ever. Don't miss this one."- Tulsa World "Outwardly bossy and vain, inwardly insecure and vulnerable, Agatha grows more endearing with each installment."- Cleveland Plain Dealer "More great fun from an endearing heroine."- Library Journal Agatha Raisin and The Wizard of Evesham "Another delightful cozy featuring Cotswolds surroundings, a bit of history, and buoyant characters."- Library Journal "[A] smartly updated Miss Marple...Beaton's books about this tough little Raisin cookie are well-made and smoothly oiled entertainment machines...trust Agatha to solve it all in style."-Amazon.com "The return of Agatha Raisin, amateur sleuth extraordinaire, is always a treat and M.C. Beaton does not miss a beat...another fabulous English cozy by the great M.C. Beaton."-Harriet Klausner, Painted Rock Reviews Agatha Raisin and The Wellspring of Death "Tourists are advised to watch their back in the bucolic villages where M.C. Beaton sets her sly British mysteries...outsiders always spell trouble for the inbred societies Beaton observes with such cynical humor."- The New York Times Book Review "Outspoken, chain-smoking, aggravating Agatha roars back for a[n]...outing that will keep fans cheering. Must be something in the water."- The Poisoned Pen Agatha Raisin and The Terrible Tourist "Another refreshing and delightful series addition."- Library Journal Agatha Raisin and The Murderous Marraige "Beaton gleefully creates one excruciating situation after another for her indomitable heroine to endure."- Publishers Weekly 'Til Death Do You Part... Crankier than ever, Agatha Raisin wants to forget that her husband left her to enter a monastery-a turn of affairs more humiliating than when she caught him with a mistress. She feels abandoned, fat, frumpy, and absolutely furious. What are her options? She takes an island vacation and joins a Pilates class. But what finally lifts her spirits is finding a corpse. The dead girl is a member of Agatha's exercise class, afloat in a rain-swollen river, dressed in a bridal gown, and clutching a wedding bouquet. Agatha's policeman friend Bill Wong suggests she leave this macabre murder to the Worcester CID. Pah! What do they know? Once she enlists the aid of the bachelor mystery writer next door, puts on a disguise, and interviews some likely suspects, Agatha will be her brash, redoubtable self again- unless she becomes the killer's next victim first... M.C. Beaton is the Scottish-born author of the Agatha Raisin novels, the Hamish Macbeth series and The Skeleton in the Closet . She lives in a village in the English Cotswolds. Read more

Features & Highlights

  • Agatha Raisin and the Day the Floods Came
  • continues the tradition in M. C. Beaton's beloved Agatha Raisin mystery series―now a hit show on Acorn TV and public television.
  • Marital bliss was short-lived for Agatha Raisin. Her marriage to James Lacey was a disaster from the beginning, and in the end, he left her-not for another woman, but for God. After having been miraculously cured of a brain tumor, James has decided to join a monastery in France. Agatha can usually depend on her old friend, Sir Charles Fraith, to be there when times are tough, but even Charles has abandoned her, dashing off to Paris to marry a young French tart.
  • Miserable and alone, Agatha hops on a plane and heads for a remote island in the South Pacific. To Agatha's surprise, she makes friends with her fellow travelers easily, and keeps herself out of mischief, despite the odd feeling she gets from one particularly attractive honeymooning couple. But when she later finds that the pretty bride has drowned under suspicious circumstances, Agatha wishes she had found a way to intervene.
  • Returning home to the Cotswolds, Agatha is grimly determined to move on with her life and to forget about James and Charles. They have, after all, forgotten about her. And what better way than to throw herself into another murder investigation? A woman, dressed in a wedding gown and still clutching her bouquet, has just been found floating in a river. The police say it's suicide, but Agatha suspects the girl's flashy young fiancé. With the help of her handsome, and single, new neighbor, Agatha sets off to prove the police wrong.

Customer Reviews

Rating Breakdown

★★★★★
30%
(635)
★★★★
25%
(529)
★★★
15%
(317)
★★
7%
(148)
★
23%
(487)

Most Helpful Reviews

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Another Excellent book in this series.

Another excellent fast paced interesting mystery story. I say story because the story of Agatha is more interesting than the mysteries though they are excellent. I know some people find Agatha's angst about getting older tiresome after a time but to me this is a woman who never began to try to have a life till she retired then found that it was pretty much too late. Never having been a pretty woman she had not made earlier efforts to preserve her looks like a pretty woman would. All of a sudden she is trying to be attractive, to have a romantic life, etc., without the faintest notion of how to go about it. It's just so human that I can't help but enjoy watching her efforts and they are pitiful at times. To get back to the mystery, I enjoyed it and only had some idea in my mind about who was responsible. These Agatha Raisin stories make the normal American COZY mystery seem stupid and insipid as well as boring. I hope there are other English cozy mysteries out there as this series is excellent.
3 people found this helpful
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Pretty darn bad

Look, I like formula mystery. Its nice that you know what the playing field is in a Nero Wolf.

But Agatha Rasin take it to absurd levels. This is the almost *the same book* as "The Haunted House". New neighbor; she is grumpy and aloof from him; the get closer; a series of misunderstandings retards their relationship. The books replay the same relationship with the police and with Agatha's other neighbors.

The plot is paper thin, so you cant read this series for that. The Agatha character is amusing and new, but for god's sake the author cant simply retread the same actions and dialogue in every book.

Not worth reading, unless you are on a plane trip.
3 people found this helpful
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Agatha Raisin Appears to be Growing Up

As I live and breathe, that Agatha Raisin appears to be growing up. No longer is she endlessly chasing after James, or Charles or even the new man next door. Agatha is not doing anything as trite as trying to "find herself", but she is starting to come to some new realizations and her old irritating self is starting to wear off those rough edges and slowly, but surely, turn into a tolerable woman.

In a deep slump after James joined the Monastery and Charles has run off and married a woman purported to be carrying twin; Agatha is left to her own depressed thoughts, that is, until a body is found floating down the river. Though the police call it a suicide - Agatha knows better and sets off to solve the mystery of the woman and why she was wearing a wedding dress and carrying a bouquet of flowers.

Mrs. Bloxby comes into her own in this book; she is a character that I have always enjoyed for her never-ending insight and patience when it comes to Agatha and her harebrained schemes. Police Chief Budge is still completely flabbergasted by Agatha and the regular characters make their usual appearance, including the reverend and his endless frustration with "that horrible Agatha woman".

The overall story is not that fascinating, but the characters are what brings me back again and again to this series. If you are expecting a thrilling and fascinating read, you will not find that here, but start this series at the beginning and you will find a parade of characters that never cease to entertain.
2 people found this helpful
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Plot vs. Chracter

One does not read Ms. Beaton for ingenious plotting (sadly), but to spend time with her semi-dysfunctional, highly amusing characters (happily). One must overlook dramatic contrivances, and if you can do so, you'll be rewarded with a quick, addictive read.
2 people found this helpful
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Very disappointing effort

Having just finished this book, the twelfth in the series, I have to say I don't understand the high number of 4 and 5 star reviews. M. C. Beaton almost lost a reader with this mystery full of two-faced, back-stabbing, and manipulating young women from a typing pool. Yuck. And the grotesque thought of a dead woman in a wedding dress holding a wedding bouquet along with what Agatha finds in a freezer late in the book was more than I had come to expect from M. C. Beaton. Give me a simple poisoning or cosh on the head any time.

I also found the whole rugged vacation to the Robinson Crusoe Island to be a very contrived plot point, and then it happened again!?! It certainly didn't take a trip to Chile to find someone who could give Agatha a few 'wise words' about men and relationships. Mrs. Bloxby has been filling that bill from the start. In fact, let Miss Simms surprise us by giving Aggie a few practical sentiments. Miss Simms knows men extremely well, and I'd much rather read about Carsely than take an unpleasant trip to a very unlikely Agatha-type tourist destination.

Beaton's new character, John Armitage, is a dud. The village women flocking to a male newcomer is becoming ridiculous. It's too convenient and a sign of the author's disdain of her audience, to continue to move available men into the house next door to Agatha's.

To further insult the reader, the author has Agatha wear a disguise during the story. Very weak, as I'm sure someone as aggressive as Agatha has a very distinctive walk, and then there's always the pesky problem of wearing the same clothes with and without the disguise. Said disguise inconveniently gets a disliked newcomer to the village killed, but Agatha's response is synonymous with a shrug of the shoulders.

I give this book two stars only because it provides a chain in the series.
1 people found this helpful
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Who Killed the Bride?

In the 12th book in the Agatha Raisin series, Agatha is still feeling a bit blue after her husband, James Lacey, leaves her to join a monastery. Saying that his brain tumor is now cured, he tells Agatha that he wants to become a monk and moves to France. Sad and alone, Agatha takes a holiday to a small island, and while she is there, she spots a newlywed couple, only to find out days later that the groom murdered the bride. Returning home, Agatha is determined to forget about James and Sir Charles Fraith, who has also married. When another dead body shows up (again in a wedding dress), Agatha feels that the fates are screaming at her to get involved. Is it suicide or is it murder? A new love interest, next door neighbor John Armitage, might be just the help Agatha needs to solve her latest case.

The Agatha Raisin series is one of my favorite cozy mystery series on the market today. Agatha is a tough cookie, but definitely has a warmer side that she keeps hidden from the casual observer. Her antics are legendary, and even though her motives are usually good, she always finds herself in heaps of trouble. I am glad that James has moved on in this book, as his character was annoying and selfish. I am eager to see Agatha with a decent love interest, but feel that all of her love problems may add to her charm. If you like cozy mysteries and have not tried this series, pick up a copy today and join all of the Agatha fans from around the world!

The first book in this series is "Agatha Raisin and the Quiche of Death". Enjoy!
1 people found this helpful
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agatha raisin rides again

You can't go wrong if you want to be entertained. MC Beaton writes a delightful cozy mystery. I love Agatha Raisin and her adventures. I am trying to collect every volume. I will read them more than once. Adore MC Beaton's books.
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book was in great shape

book was great came fast
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Book

It arrived in good condition and was a fun read as are all in this series!
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Fun to read between "weight-ier" books

Very light reading. A true British cozy. Fun to read between "weight-ier" books.

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