From the Publisher
"Full of perfectly pitched interest, intrigue, and charm.” —Lee Child
“As always, M. C. Beaton presents us with an Agatha Raisin who manages to infuriate, amuse and solicit our deepest sympathies as we watch her blunder her way boldly through another murder mystery.” —Bookreporter.com on Hiss and Hers
“I know I once vowed to read only Agatha Christie for a year, but I've cheated. My No. 1 mistress: M.C. Beaton and her Agatha Raisin whodunits. Agatha is like Miss Marple with a drinking problem, pack-a-day habit, and major man lust.” —Entertainment Weekly on A Spoonful of Poison
“Few things in life are more satisfying than to discover a brand-new Agatha Raisin mystery.” —Tampa Tribune
New York Journal of Books
With Dishing the Dirt, M. C. Beaton proves that once you meet Agatha Raisin, you’ll keep coming back.”
AudioFile
Narrator Alison Larkin gives an enthusiastic narration of this lighthearted mystery…with a crisp English accent…Larkin’s reading is vivacious.”
Booklist
The acerbic Agatha Raisin is back in her twenty-sixth outing…Agatha is the same character fans have adored and others have disdained all these years: vain; envious of younger, prettier women; man crazy; and blunt to the point of rudeness. It may not be everyone’s recipe for success, but it works for Agatha.”
Lee Child
The Agatha Raisin series is my guilty pleasure—it’s full of perfectly pitched interest, intrigue, and charm.”
OCTOBER 2015 - AudioFile
Narrator Alison Larkin gives an enthusiastic narration of this lighthearted mystery. While she doesn’t fully inhabit the character of the headstrong, man-hunting, middle-aged private detective Agatha Raisin, she does offer a pleasant reading with a crisp English accent. In this installment of the long-running series, Agatha finds herself a suspect in the murder of a local therapist who has been blackmailing her clients by threatening to reveal their secrets. Using her intuition, pompous attitude, and sheer luck, Agatha sets out to find the real murderer. Larkin’s reading is vivacious, but there are several awkward pauses and inconsistencies in character voices that sometimes make it difficult to discern who is speaking. M.M.G. © AudioFile 2015, Portland, Maine
Kirkus Reviews
2015-06-30
A private detective continues her search for love in all the wrong places. Her hunches pan out so very often that Agatha Raisin may well be the cleverest detective in the Cotswolds. But her taste in men leaves a lot to be desired. This time, however, trouble comes from an unexpected source. The newest arrival in Carsely, Jill Davent, who's set up a counseling practice, makes an enemy of Agatha when she discovers the poverty-stricken background the sleuth has worked so hard to conceal. Soon after Agatha visits Jill in her office and declares "leave me alone or I'll kill you," Mrs. Bloxby, Agatha's good friend and wife of the local vicar, finds Jill dead, and Agatha is the prime suspect. Agatha would like the killer to be the lovely Gwen Simple, the mother of the murderer in her last case (The Blood of an Englishman, 2014), but Jill had plenty of other clients with something to hide—and it turns out that she was a blackmailer. As more bodies are added to the count, Agatha, Sir Charles Fraith, her friend and sometime lover, and the rest of her regular team continue to investigate. At least one of the victims was poisoned by monkshood, and Agatha's search for that poisonous plant leads to a number of attempts on her life. As usual, Agatha attracts and forfeits the attentions of a number of eligible bachelors while hunting a clever killer; a basket full of red herrings makes this one of her more interesting cases.
