(right), author of the Agatha Raisin series, and
Ashley Jensen, who portrayed Raisin in the
TV series adaptation, at the
Bloody Scotland festival in 2018. Agatha Raisin is a frustrated, yet endearing, middle-aged former public-relations agent who moved from
London to Carsely in the
Cotswolds when she sold her public-relations firm in
Mayfair and took early retirement. She solves murders in each of the earlier books, but in the fifteenth book
Agatha Raisin and the Deadly Dance (2004) Agatha sets up her own detective agency. The police, and even some of her acquaintances, insist that she solves crimes through accident and luck. In the first book,
Agatha Raisin and the Quiche of Death (1992), Agatha is 53. (She remains 'in her early fifties' throughout the series, even in the novels set during the late 2000s / early 2010s recession.) She was born Agatha Styles in a tower-block slum in Birmingham to Joseph and Margaret Styles, both unemployed drunks living on benefits and occasional bouts of shoplifting. She went for one glorious week on a rare family vacation to the Cotswolds — her parents preferred going to a casino/holiday camp — and she never forgot that golden holiday nor the beauty of the countryside. Agatha went to the local comprehensive, then saved enough from her biscuit factory wages to run off to London. After an evening secretarial course she worked as a secretary in a public relations firm, moved into public relations work and saved enough to start her own company. She lives in the village of Carsely, but her detective agency
Raisin Investigations and the police headquarters where Bill Wong is based are in the nearby town of Mircester. Even though Carsely and Mircester are fictional, they are based on real places; she does, however, frequent
Evesham,
Moreton-in-Marsh,
Stow-on-the-Wold,
Chipping Campden and other nearby towns and villages quite often. Agatha's first case came when she moved to Carsely and heard about a quiche competition. She promptly bought a spinach quiche in London from a famous quiche shop and entered it as her own. She was outraged she did not win but later the judge, Reg Cummings-Browne, took another slice and died from
cowbane poisoning. Frustrated, Agatha set out to find the poisoner and clear her own name. Agatha's character in the TV series, as played by
Ashley Jensen, is notably different from her depiction in the novels: she is less bitter and more vulnerable than the version in the books. Other characters from the novels and some of the relationships between them are also notably different in the TV series, making the cast more of an ensemble. ==Novels==