Reading another cozy mystery

 M. C. Beaton has been writing mysteries for a long time. She is Marion Chesney of the Cotswolds in England who writes romances under her own name. Born in 1936 in Scotland as Marion McChesney, she has more than one pseudonym. Before the Agatha Raison series she wrote the Hamish Macbeth mystery series that she started in 1985 with Death of a Gossip. I decided to start with the first of her Agatha Raisin series, Agatha Raisin and the Quiche of Death, written in 1992. Agatha Raisin is a divorced woman in her 50's about to retire from her London job who has always dreamed of living in a cottage in the Cotswolds. As she places herself in the perfect cottage, she immediately feels the coldness of her fellow neighbors. She decides to enter a cooking contest only to end up the suspect of a murder investigation, as the judge of the contest took her quiche home and ended up dying of poison. How could everything end up this badly. Because she is a woman of action, Agatha Raisin starts her own investigation of the murder. Murder with a little fun thrown together in a small village creates the perfect cozy mystery. If you haven't found these yet, you are in for a real treat because she has written 22 mysteries so far with a wide audience appeal. One appeal is that the reader knows that the mystery will be solved at the end of the book, and the main character may go through some dangerous and suspenseful events, she will be alive at the end. Not all mysteries can say that.