Down the Hatch by MC Beaton and RW Green is the 32th book in the Agatha Raisin series. I love this series, and am hoping Mr. Green will continue to write new books and Ms. Beaton will RIP. I have read all the books in this cozy mystery series. I love that Agatha is a strong woman, but can be whiny and has a low self esteem. She is outspoken and can be dominating, but she seems to be mellowing, at least a little, with age. As with all Agatha Raisin books, it has more twists and turns, that kept me reading page after page. It feels like I dropped in for a visit at the Pub, and catching up on all the gossip. I found this book to be a quick read, with a well developed plot and characters. If you love cozy mysteries than I highly recommend this book. To get the most out of this series, I would start book one and read them all in order.
I received a complimentary copy of this book. Opinions expressed in this review are completely my own.

Rating is 3.5 stars.

CW: internalized fatphobia

{Thanks to NetGalley, St. Martin's Press, and Minotaur Books for the gift of an eARC in exchange for an honest review.}

Agatha Raisin is minding her own business (for once) on her lunchtime walk when she responds to sounds of distress and finds a dead body at the Mircester Bowling Club. When DCI Wilkes decided the death is an accident, Agatha disagrees and decides to run her own investigation.

▪ I really like Agatha Raisin. She is brash, sometimes harsh, but deep down she is also very fragile. I love a lot of things about her, yet she has a lot of unpleasant opinions about women and how they should behave and look, as well as the occasional xenophobia. I experienced the previous books as audiobooks, so I noticed less, but I ma finding it all distasteful. I can’t even say these are strictly Agatha’s opinions, because in this book James gets into it as well. I don’t believe all fictional characters have to be perfect, but I don’t get the impression in this book that we are meant to judge Agatha for her terrible opinions, as if the author believes we will agrees with her.

▪ Change of author. To follow on the above, the slight misogyny that Agatha expresses was bad enough when the author was a woman, but M.C. Beaton has been replaced as author by R.W. Green, who is male. This makes the whole thing worse, somehow.

▪ Solid mystery, as always. I have nothing to say about the mystery, it is well crafted, with a lot of exciting twists, and even a few chases.

This is another solid mystery in this series. I only wish Agatha would get with the times. Oh, and stop obsessing about her weight.

This was an excellent Agatha Raisin mystery. She is on the case of an another murder. A old guy that nobody liked has been poisoned. James decides he is going to help Agatha with this case like back in the old days.
This one was written by MC Beaton and RW Green. I hope he continues with this series because it is so much fun.

I was saddened by Ms. Beaton's death but glad to see this new one with Agatha and friends. I've read this series from book 1 and this was a nice addition to the series. The characters were the same but same but Agatha seemed to have lost a bit of her attitude in this book.

Mystery was well-written and kept me turning pages late into the night.

There were tempo issues and many non-Agatha moments, which made this a challenging read for me. Many believe that R. W. Green is not the correct author to be taking up the mantle for MC Beaton, and after this book, I might be part of that group.

Some elements could have been handled with better structure editing, or maybe a critique reading group, or even someone who knows how a woman, Agatha specifically, would have handled situations without losing flow with choppy disjointed sentences.

I am missing the old Agatha. The feisty and vulnerable Agatha, not the current version of a woman with no depth or snarky retorts.

Down the Hatch by M. C. Beaton and R.W Green is the latest installment in the popular Agatha Raisin cozy mystery series. It is full of familiar characters, luscious settings and witty banter. It is light on mystery, which is expected of a cozy, but full of fun for devoted readers.
It has been many years since I read an Agatha Raisin book and I was unfamiliar with several of the characters and most of the backstory. That did not detract from being able to follow the plot. This can be read as a standalone, however I suspect it is more enjoyable to those who have followed the series faithfully. It was a pleasant read but not memorable.
Thank you to NetGalley and Minotaur books for the ARC of Down the Hatch in exchange for an unbiased review.

Very well paced cozy mystery. There isn't a big twist. The atmosphere is light and nice. I have been on a cozy bender and this one didn't really stick out in any way, but I enjoyed it nether the less. It's a solid 3 out of 5.

Agatha Raisin finds another corpse in Down the Hatch, book 32 in the popular Cotswolds’ mystery series.

Down the Hatch doesn’t wait more than a few pages for Agatha to get embroiled in yet another police case in this fast-moving mystery. When first seeing the body, Agatha, and the astute reader, quickly determines the victim was poisoned. The victim is the Admiral, who is an almost universally hated town drunk.

I am usually able to tell when a new author takes over a series (i.e., Spenser and Jesse Stone). However, this book has the exact same feeling as all the other books in the series. And that feeling is delightful! Agatha is very shrewd but equally madcap. It is an effective combination. 4.5 stars rounded up to 5 stars!

Note: Since Agatha is a woman of a certain age, you might think this is a cozy or a Miss Marple type of mystery. It is nothing of the kind! Agatha has an active romantic life, though nothing explicit is described.

Thanks to Minotaur Books and NetGalley for a copy in exchange for my honest review.

R.W. Green is finding his footing with this latest Agatha Raisin mystery. Agatha’s acerbic temperament hits a familiar note. Her yo-yo relationships with lovers and staff are appropriately aggravating. Green’s descriptive prose is a welcome respite from the routine two steps forward, one step back theme of Agatha’s typical progress through the books. The links to recent books are also a fun carry-through to peak the reader’s interest in future books.

Down the Hatch by MC Beaton is vintage Agatha Raisin, and with all out favorite characters putting in an appearance. Agatha comes upon an elderly couple that has just discovered a body outside a bowls' club and the whole things strikes her as curious so she decides to investigate. While the police say it was natural causes, she sees sign of poisoning and can't let it go until she discovers if it was suicide or murder. As usual, Aggie has a lot going on beyond this situation and so she uses her staff to the best of their capabilities including send Simon off to act as a bin man (garbage collector) to assist in a drug sting, and she and James discovering an exotic animal smuggling ring, and forcing Bill Wong's parents into being more accepting of his romance with fellow officer, Alice Peters. Agatha likes to keep busy.

Despite the fact of MC Beaton's death, RW Green has managed to successfully keep the franchise going, not always the case in this situation. Agatha is an iconic character, known to all cozy readers, and continues to be one of the standard bearers for heroines. She manages to keep so many balls in the air contiguously that sometimes the reader has to go back a page or two see what he/she missed. They are always interesting and usually right in plain sight, as is the case here. It is sometimes difficult to separate those clients who are simply loony from those who have limited experience and so misinterpret. Agatha seems to know the difference. For Agatha fans, his will be a welcome respite from months of drought.

I was invited to read a free e-ARC of Down the Hatch by Minotaur Books, through Netgalley. All thoughts and opinions are mine. #netgalley #minotaur #mcbeaton #downthehatch

Agatha Raisin is very happy living in the Cotswolds, enjoying her cottage and running her private investigation business. Despite living and working in small towns, she has a surprising amount of business. She gets some referrals for insurance claims, references from friends (her one-time love interest who asks her to help a friend with a woman claiming he fathered her child), and then there are the potential murder scenes that she stumbles on all by herself.

Taking a lunchtime walk near her office, Agatha is drawn by a woman’s screams to the Mircester Crown Green Bowling Club, where she discovers Mrs. Swinburn on the ground and a man’s body nearby. She checks on the man and realizes that it’s too late for him, so she calls the police for him, requesting an ambulance for Mrs. Swinburn. She and her husband had discovered the body, who they referred to as the Admiral. He was well known in the park, as the former president of the Bowling Club.

Agatha immediately thinks that the Admiral was poisoned, but the police officer who shows up to take over thinks it’s an accident. But she knows that she can still investigate and find out what happened. Meanwhile, she gets a call from a man who looked into his garden and saw some short wizards, giant smiling rats, and the ghost of Aslan, the white lion from The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe. They all ran away, but before they did, one of the smiling rats reached into a pouch on its belly and pulled out a tiny rat and threw it at him.

When Agatha showed up to see the tiny smiling rat, her date James realized that the rats were quokkas, the wizards were a type of monkey, and the lion was, well, a lion. Agatha finds out where the animals were headed and make plans to investigate the next day. But what she finds there puts her on the radar of some very dangerous men.

As Agatha investigates the Admiral’s death, she learns a lot about the man and about the men and women of the Bowling Club. Mrs. Swinburn is the current president, and she and her husband had worked to make the club friendly to women and children. The Admiral had banned children and discouraged women to join, and he had talked about taking out the rose bushes to add more greens. Aside from a few close friends, he hadn’t been a popular leader, so Agatha is finding plenty of suspects, including the Admiral’s widow Cathy.

But when her investigating turns into a death-defying car ride, with another car behind her trying to run her off the road, will Agatha’s will to uncover the truth be stronger than someone’s desire to keep the secret, or will it mean the end of Agatha Raisin?

M.C. Beaton’s favorite Miss Marple is back with yet another murder investigation in Down the Hatch. Author R. W. Green, working with the late Ms. Beaton’s characters and her ideas, has crafted a new Agatha Raisin book with all the bells and whistles, all the snakes and bastards, and all the potential love interests and heartbroken exes that you could ask for.

I adore Agatha. I love her new life in the Cotswolds, love the characters who surround her, and love her spirit and ingenuity. I thoroughly enjoyed Down the Hatch. While it may not be my favorite Agatha Raisin, this is certainly in the top 5, which is impressive for a series with 32 books. There is a lot going on in this book, and all of it is classic Aggie. Getting to read a new Agatha Raisin book is almost as good as retiring to a lovely Cotswold cottage myself. It’s just so much fun!

Egalleys for Down the Hatch were provided by St. Martin’s Press, Minotaur Books, through NetGalley, with many thanks.

Down the Hatch tells the next installment of the Agatha Raisin story. Agatha is a quirky and sometime cranky private investigator, and this time a mystery has fallen into her lap. She is investigating the death of the town drunk, that the police say was accidental, but Agatha believes was homicide.

I haven't read many books that would be considered Cozy Mysteries, so I felt like I was going a little out on a limb for this one. It was entertaining and the book flowed fairly well, but I felt like this book (and series) just wasn't really for me. I haven't read any of the other installments of this series, and thought I could just jump in. I feel like although I enjoyed the book, I missed a lot of the context by not knowing the characters. The author tried to give a little background and history, but there wasn't enough given to fully "catch up" and really enjoy the story to its fullest. I also felt like the story jumped around a lot, with a few "mini mysteries" within the larger picture. It was hard to follow those, since I didn't know the characters and players as well as I could have, had I read the previous 30 some odd books.

Overall, this book has an audience, I just don't think that audience was me. While I enjoyed the "cozy" aspect of it-- not too serious, some attempts at humor, etc.-- the whole book really fell flat for me. Those who are more familiar with the series or serious lovers of cozy mysteries will probably have a different view of this book than I did, though!

Thank you to the author(s), publisher and Net Galley for an advanced copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

M C Beaton passed away in December 2019. Fortunately for us she chose a successor. R W Green, to carry on with her Agatha Raisin series. "Down the Hatch" is the first book completely written by Green, and it's a good one. I couldn't tell the difference between this book and the ones written by Beaton, I am happy to say.

I don't like spoilers, so I am not going to give any. Suffice it to say, the gang's all here, and what a pleasure that is. If this is your first Agatha Raisin you will have no trouble keeping up; if this is your thirty-second, you will have a lot of fun.

Thanks to the publisher and NetGalley for the ARC.

I received a free electronic ARC of this British historical novel from Netgalley, authors M.C. Beaton and R.W. Green, and Saint Martin's Press - Minotaur Books. Thank you all for sharing your hard work with me. I have read this novel of my own volition, and this review reflects my honest opinion of this work. This is number 32 of the Agatha Raisin mysteries, always a fast, good read to a simpler, less troubled world. There are still lots of woe and problems, but chances are they won't be any of your problems brought to mind. M.C. Beaton will be greatly missed. I am glad to see her work is being carried on.

Since M. C. Beaton passed away, R. W. Green has kept Agatha Raisin alive for her many fans. I'm one of those who is just fine with the way he presents her, a little less edgy, a bit more professional but still having issues with her love life and dealing with DCI Wilkes - he who is without a clue. This was a fun cozy read.
The Admiral is found dead in the garden. Most would agree that the title was not earned and most would also agree that he was generally disliked. When his death is discovered to be due to the imbibing of rum laced with weedkiller, the idea of it being accidental is dismissed by Agatha. She says murder while DCI Wilkes says accident. Agatha sets out to prove it was murder while also handling a case of paternity and a local man who claims there are wizards in his garden.
Agatha, in any situation, is a treat and I'm so glad that she is still entertaining this reader. The mysteries are well done, the village setting is just right and the various recurring characters are in fine form. I hope R. W. (Rod) Green will be writing many more mysteries for Agatha to solve.
My thanks to the publisher Minotaur and to NetGalley for giving me an advance copy in exchange for my honest review.

Down the Hatch is number thirty-two in the series and the second contribution by R.W. Green Green was able to collaborate with M.C. Beaton before her death. I think Green has done a good job of capturing the essence of the books and the characters. Agatha is a little kinder and more mature, more like the television series version of the character, and her ex-husband and friend James is warmer and less pompous, but those are changes I enjoyed.

In this latest case, Agatha works to solve an unusual poisoning case with help from James and her colleague Toni. I hope Agatha can hold onto her new attitude towards Toni, as well. She is still wistful about Toni’s looks and beauty, but doesn’t let pettiness get in the way of their working relationship and their friendship. Don’t worry though - Agatha’s fire is still there and she still speaks her mind on behalf of victims and her friends. The plot becomes a little over-complicated, but I enjoyed the book and hope Green continues to add to this delightful series.

Thank you to NetGalley and Minotaur Books for providing an advance copy of this ebook. The book was provided to me at no cost, but my review is voluntary and unbiased.

Another notch in the belt of Agatha Raisin as she helps solve yet another murder. Quirky as ever and joined by an old flame, Agatha races to clear of a local couple after the cantankerous Admiral is murdered.

After M. C. Beaton sadly passed away in 2019, Rod Green is making her characters live on. He's done well with Agatha Raisin, who is just as feisty as ever.

On a lunchtime power walk, she hears a scream and finds elderly Mr. and Mrs. Swinburn, with a corpse at their feet.

Agatha and James Lacey also investigate this as well as the illegal sales of exotic species together.

She and James make quite a team this time - where might this lead?

In this 32nd installment, and the 2nd written by R.W. Green who took over after Beaton’s death; the irascible Agatha Raisin stumbles across another body while on a lunchtime walk. The park gardener for the Mircester Crown Bowling Club known as the “Admiral” appears to have died after accidentally drinking rum laced with weedkiller, but Agatha is not fooled! Once again finding herself at odds with the incompetent DCI Wilkes, Agatha is determined to prove that this latest death was in fact murder and bring the perpetrator to justice. Along with this case Agatha and her team of detectives must juggle a myriad of other investigations including a paternity suit and a gentleman who claims to see wizards in his back garden.

As usual Agatha’s love life is a mess. Still contending with her feelings for Sir Charles Fraith and next-door neighbor James Lacey, she must also fend off the unwanted advances of the new coroner.

While Green handles the mysteries as deftly as Beaton did, there seems to be something lacking in her portrayal of Agatha herself. Usually quick tempered and prickly, Green’s version is a milder, meeker manifestation of Agatha. In addition, the relationships with Agatha’s competing suitors are tamer and less lusty. I also found that the normally quirky minor characters are either less fleshed out or missing altogether.
For those new to the series, this is a fine mystery, but for lovers of Agatha Raisin there is a little lacking. Hopefully, she will be back and true to form in the next installment.

It's hard to say goodbye to a beloved series when the author passes away as has M.C. Beaton. R.W. Green, her friend and fellow author, has picked up the mantle and attempted to carry on with the series with all the usual characters. He has written quite a good mystery in his second attempt and the book is worth reading for that alone.

It seems to me though that the writer has lost that ineffable something (snarkiness?) that made Agatha so amusing and special. For instance, remember when she'd dash to fix her make-up whenever a handsome male would cross her path? Gone! And how jealous she has been of Toni's youth and beauty? Now she's okay with being mistaken for mother and daughter. No more deep-seated inferiority complex rearing its ugly head. And now she and James have restarted their relationship with no hint of the friction that always drove them apart. It's as if all her relationships and most of her rough edges have been smoothed over. If you don't mind a toned-down Agatha who has even learned to get along with Charles' butler Gustav, I would recommend this well-written, intriguing mystery.

I received an arc of this new mystery from the publisher via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. Many thanks for the opportunity.