Killing Time

Beloved New York Times bestseller M. C. Beaton’s cranky, crafty Agatha Raisin—the star of her own hit television series—is back on the case again.

Agatha Raisin’s private detective agency is working flat out on a series of shop burglaries. The break-ins seem to have taken a violent turn when a friend of Agatha’s is murdered during a raid on his shop. Although determined to nail the villains, Agatha still makes time to help Sir Charles Fraith prepare to stage a massive, hugely glamorous, promotional event in the grounds of his ancestral home, Barfield House.

When Agatha begins to receive death threats and narrowly avoids being abducted by kidnappers, she takes advantage of a previously arranged trip to the island of Mallorca to lie low for a while. There she meets her partner, former police officer John Glass, who is now working as a dance instructor on a cruise liner. Their relationship founders over John’s apparent closeness to his stage dance partner, Louise. Putting her love life on hold, Agatha heads home, having worked out who has been threatening her life.

Can Agatha track down whoever it is that wants her dead, nail her friend’s murderers, and rescue her romance with John Glass? Everything comes to a climax at the Barfield Extravaganza when Agatha also manages to solve a 400-year-old Cotswold murder mystery!

M. C. Beaton (1936–2019), hailed as the “Queen of Crime” by the Globe and Mail, was the author of the New York Times and USA Today bestselling Agatha Raisin novels—the basis for the hit series on Acorn TV—as well as the Hamish Macbeth series. Born in Scotland, Beaton also wrote nearly one hundred historical romances under several pseudonyms. Her books have been translated into nineteen languages and sold more than twenty-two million copies worldwide.

R. W. Green, a long-time friend of M. C. Beaton, has written numerous works of fiction and nonfiction. He lives in Surrey with his family and a black Labrador called Flynn.

Penelope Keith is an Earphones Award–winning narrator and award-winning actress who is best known for her roles in To the Manor Born and The Good Life, but she has appeared in many other television programs, including No Job for a Lady and Law and Disorder. Her theater performances include The Norman Conquests, Hay Fever, and Mrs. Warren’s Profession. She has received several BAFTA Awards and in 2014 was appointed a Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire.