After being nearly killed by both a hired hit man and her former secretary, Agatha Raisin could use some low-key cases. So when Robert Smedley walks through the door, determined to prove that his wife is cheating, Raisin Investigations immediately offers to help. Trouble is, Agatha hates divorce cases--especially when the client is as pompous as Smedley--but she has a business to run and she's not about to turn away a paying customer. Unfortunately for Agatha, Mabel Smedley appears to be the perfect wife, young and pretty and a regular volunteer at church.
Although Smedley's case doesn't look promising, Agatha's attentions are diverted when she stumbles across the body of missing teenager, Jessica Bradley. In a sudden gesture of kindness (and good public relations), Agatha offers to investigate Jessica's death free of charge.
In M.C. Beaton's The Perfect Paragon, as Agatha juggles her two biggest cases, things are turned upside down when Robert Smedley is found poisoned in his office. The prime suspect, his sainted wife Mabel, immediately hires Agatha to find the real killer.
With the help of her old friend, Sir Charles Fraith, and some newly hired staff, Agatha Raisin sets off on another adventure solving crime in the English Cotswolds.
AGATHA RAISIN...AND THE CASE FROM HELLShe's nosed in on murder investigations, annoyed law enforcement on two continents, and been targeted by everyone from a hit man to a killer secretary. But now Agatha Raisin must take on her greatest nightmare―a divorce case. Bad enough that her struggling detective agency needs the whacking great fee pompous businessman Robert Smedley is offering to prove his wife is unfaithful; it's even worse that Mrs. Smedley is the kind of sweet, accomplished, lovely, gentle, and all-around perfectly wonderful spouse that Agatha couldn't be in a thousand years. So, when Smedley turns up poisoned, Agatha is relieved enough to help his now-desperate wife clear her name. And with the assistance of her firm's eccentric new staff, Agatha enthusiastically follows leads and a batch of suspects through the English countryside's seediest byways. But the police aren't about to let an interfering "amateur" beat them to the punch. And as Agatha hits one dead end after another, a particularly devious killer is looking forward to making sure the indomitable Agatha never has to worry about old age―or anything else.
