Agatha Raisin, the ace detective and former public relations professional is also an incurable romantic. This tale finds Ms. Raisin attending the wedding of her ex-husband James Lacey to a young blond empty headed girl half his age. But, before Agatha can be too condemning the young bride is found shot to death in an upstairs room in the mansion of her parents. Dressed in her snow white wedding gown she is a beautiful corpse with a hole in her head and blood all over. Her distraught mother hires Agatha to investigate and find the murderer of her daughter.
Agatha and her young assistant begin snooping around but when they start to discover things, like the fact that the girl was really the result of her “father’s” affair and had been smuggled in from France, she is summarily fired from her detecting.
But that does not end the case. There are two more murders and Agatha continues to detect. She is constantly being dragged into police stations since she is always the one to discover the new bodies in this mystery. It turns out that the girl’s father is a smuggler of Chinese peasants into England and is working with a wealthy and ruthless Frenchman who attempts to seduce Agatha and then kill her.
He does not succeed and is captured as Agatha escapes his clutches. Even though the Frenchman is sent to prison, he manages to get his associates to hunt and try to murder Agatha two more times.
Mixed in with all of this high detecting adventure is Agatha’s deep-seated need to find a man to give her comfort and purpose in her declining years. She bumbles around in her investigations and only manages to get out of scrape after scrape through the brilliance of her young assistant. Meanwhile, Agatha can’t seem to find a man who is not a villain out to use her or kill her.
A failure in both her detective agency and her attempt at a love life, Agatha decides to turn her Agency over to her younger colleagues and retire for good. Wouldn’t you know it… She meets another man who takes her away to France for a small holiday where they intend to find out if they are compatible before they get married. The trip only shows Agatha that this guy is not what she expected or wanted and she has to be rescued by a friend who takes her away for a week in the South of France for a real and relaxing holiday. Agatha returns all refreshed and takes over her detective agency with a new vigor this time. So, I guess there will be more Agatha Raisin stories from Ms. Beaton.
“There Goes the Bride” is a compelling story following a well refined pattern with a heroine that is both brilliant and bumbling; both a success and a failure; much like many of us. It earns an 8 of 10 on the Weaver meter. Nice story.
