DOWN THE HATCH

Quick-tempered private detective Agatha Raisin gets involved in several cases that prove dangerous to her health.

Out for a lunchtime walk, Agatha hears screams and comes upon a distressed elderly couple and a dead body. She’s quite certain the man known as the Admiral was poisoned, but her nemesis, the incompetent DCI Wilkes, dismisses his death as an accident. As usual, Agatha’s love life is a bit of a mess. She’s on the outs with Sir Charles Fraith after a series of misunderstandings. Her former husband, James Lacey, is back to wooing her. And she makes an enemy of the new coroner after refusing his crude advances. When Raisin Investigations gets a phone call from a Mr. Collins, who insists that "strange creatures keep appearing" in his garden, including "three small wizards dressed all in black, with orange hats and long white beards," James insists that she investigate; they discover that Collins’ seemingly unbelievable descriptions are actually of rare animals that have escaped from traffickers of exotic species. After she calls the police in, Agatha makes a bad enemy in the one man who gets away. The Admiral’s less than loving widow begs her to find his killer; one of the dead man’s former loves is killed in a hit-and-run; and a friend of Charles’ hires her in a paternity case that will require all her staff and longtime friends to solve.

This second posthumous adventure contains plenty of mystery plus all the usual quota of trouble for the colorful heroine.