“The Quiche of Death” - M. C. Beaton

 (Agatha Raisin book 1)

🥧 No-nonsense Ag is immediately likable by the very fact that she doesn’t give a hoot if she is likable or not. In QOD she gets exactly what she has always wanted (retired life in the Cotswolds), only to discover that it’s not at all what she built it up to be.

🥧 Agatha’s idyllic retirement in a Cotswolds village with friendly - but not too friendly - villagers, is boring Agatha out of her mind so she decides to make some waves and inserts herself into a local mystery.

🥧 TQOD was published in 2006 so I’m having a tough time explaining away Beaton’s frequent reference to Bill Wong’s appearance. We get it, he is of Asian descent, and thus a bit of an anomaly in this English country village. The repeated references to Wong’s obvious Asianness don’t seem to add value to the narrative. I’ve decided to look past the oddly stereotypical references that Beaton makes toward Wong’s appearance because he is a significant secondary character who doesn’t play to stereotypes (despite the descriptors used by Beaton). I wonder if Wong’s treatment raised anyone else’s eyebrows?