Pushing up daisies - M. C. Beaton

Allotment wars!


Lord Bellington, Carsely's biggest landholder,
has enraged locals by saying he is going to sell off their allotments to
make way for a new housing development.
So when he turns up dead,
poisoned by antifreeze, nobody mourns his passing.

On another
fine summer's day Agatha visits Carsley's allotments where everything
looks peaceful and perfect: people of all ages digging in the soil and
working hard to grow their own fruit and veg.
Agatha feels almost
tempted to take on a strip herself . . . but common sense soon prevails.
She doesn't really like getting her hands dirty.

She is
introduced to three oldtimers who have just taken over a new strip;
Harry Perry, Bunty Daventry and Josephine Merriweather are lamenting the
neglected condition of the patch.
But as Harry starts to shovel
through the weeds and grass his spade comes across something hard so he
bends down and tries to move the object.
And then he starts to yell . .
.

The body is that of Peta Currie, a newcomer to the village -
but who would want to murder her?
Blonde and beautiful she's every
local male's favourite.
And then Lord Bellingham's son engages Agatha
to do some digging of her own and very soon Agatha is thrown into a
world of petty feuds, jealousies and disputes over land.
It would seem
that far from being tiny gardens of Eden, Carsley's allotments are local
battlefields where passions - and the bodycount - run high!

Praise for the Agatha Raisin series:

'Sharp, witty, hugely intelligent, unfailingly entertaining, delightfully intolerant and oh so magnificently non-PC, M.C. Beaton has created a national treasure' Anne Robinson

'M.C. Beaton's imperfect heroine is an absolute gem' Publishers Weekly

'The Miss Marple-like Raisin is a refreshing, sensible, wonderfully eccentric, thoroughly likeable heroine' Booklist