Stacey Bartlett: You’ve just published your 23rd Agatha Raisin novel. Can we expect much more of her? M.C. Beaton: I hope there’ll be a lot more Agatha Raisins to come. So long as the readers like her, I’ll keep on writing. SB: Is Agatha based on anybody? MCB: She’s not really based on anyone, although she does say a lot of the things I would like to say. SB: Why did you switch from writing romance to crime? MCB: You can only write what you enjoy reading. I had written so many Regency novels that I wanted to get away from 1811 to 1820. I love detective stories. I did not think of my work as being cosy. No one called detective stories that when I
book, T e Mysterious Aff air at Styles, was published in 1920 – is oſt en cited as the archetypal crime novelist of this period. She remains one of the bestselling cosy crime writers, which explains the observation by critic Nancy Banks- Smith that “Christie has probably given more pleasure in bed than any other woman”. She deserves praise as a creator of rounded, believable characters, often startling you with a psychological insight into the nature of human iniquity. It’s the equivalent of that
hot-water bottle suddenly turning ice cold at your feet.
PERIOD PIECES T ose who are sniff y about Christie’s skills as a novelist oſt en turn out to be fervent admirers of Dorothy L. Sayers and her aristocratic sleuth Lord Peter Wimsey. A fantasy figure, Wimsey can solve any problem by fl inging money at it, and speaks like a demented Bertie Wooster (“What-ho! That absolutely whangs the nail over the
started. Somehow if one does not describe torture, rape, and ‘the dark side of life’, one is damned. I feel like giving anyone who calls my work ‘cosy’ the Glasgow kiss. [Watch out, Jake!] SB: What is the best gift you’ve ever received? MCB: A word processor, in the 1980s. I used to type out my books, which was back-breaking work involving sore shoulders and Tippex. When I got my fi rst Amstrad, I felt like an overworked Victorian seamstress who’d just been handed a sewing machine.
Hiss and Hers by M.C. Beaton Constable & Robinson HB Out now
crumpet”). Even today many otherwise sensible women claim to be in love with him, and a novel like T e Nine Tailors (1934) is worth suspending your disbelief for. T e other Golden Age writers who are still read today – Ngaio Marsh, Margery
Allingham, Josephine Tey – have stayed popular because they gave their books a rare depth and texture. Some of the more typical crime writers of the period are worth reviving too. T e characters in a