MC Beaton speaks to Event about her army of loyal fans and being called ‘cosy’

Best-selling author MC Beaton is often described as the ‘queen of cosy crime’. Her army of devoted fans can’t get enough of the quirky, gently amusing mystery stories about her two beloved characters, Hamish Macbeth and Agatha Raisin, whose battles with poisoned quiches and despicable dustmen have made her one of the top ten most popular authors at British libraries.

Not that she appreciates the title. ‘I don’t like the word cosy because it’s patronising,’ she says firmly. ‘They don’t say Agatha Christie is cosy, do they? My books are very easy to read, which means people assume they’re easy to write, which isn’t the case.’

Best-selling author MC Beaton is often described as the ‘queen of cosy crime’. Her army of devoted fans can’t get enough of the quirky, gently amusing mystery stories

At 82, she’s earned the right to criticise what she views as condescension about the merits of her work, comfy as it undoubtedly is. The Glasgow-born author, whose real name is Marion Chesney, has written more than 160 novels over the course of a 40-year career and still writes two every year.

Her latest, Agatha Raisin And The Dead Ringer, is the 29th in the immensely popular series about a retired PR turned amateur sleuth. ‘It’s about bell-ringers – a particularly English thing,’ she says. ‘There’s a nasty bishop and a lot of murders.’

Agatha begins solving crimes after selling her public relations firm in London’s Mayfair, moving to the Cotswolds to take early retirement. In the 15th book, Agatha Raisin And The Deadly Dance, she sets up her own detective agency, despite the police insisting her crime-solving abilities are sheer luck.

Over the series, Agatha has grappled with a litany of rural villainy including a vet murdered with his own horse tranquiliser and a lothario stabbed with the vicar’s letter-opener.

Later this year, a second series of the television adaptation, starring Ashley Jensen as the chain-smoking, killer-heels-wearing sleuth, will be shown on Sky. The first eight-part series of the comedy drama was a hit when it aired in 2016. Its wit, sharp social observations and idyllic Cotswolds setting earned it the description by one reviewer as ‘Desperate Housewives crossed with Midsomer Murders’. The inspiration for the first Agatha Raisin book came in 1992 when Beaton was asked to bake something for a charity sale at her son’s school. ‘I went to Waitrose and bought a quiche, wrapped it in some greaseproof paper and sold it,’ she says. ‘It was a great success.’ When Agatha follows suit, it backfires when the quiche poisons one of the judges.

Today, 27 years on, the character is having quite a moment. Her fans include best-selling author Lee Child and former Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams, who has spoken of ‘going to bed with an Aggie’.

Beaton believes the secret to the series’ popularity lies in its lack of political correctness. ‘Agatha swears, she drinks and she smokes,’ she says. ‘She wears these very high heels and fur coats and says things I wouldn’t say.

‘She has vulnerabilities about ageing and getting a moustache, which women sometimes think they’re the only ones to have experienced. And the stories show village life in the Cotswolds, which is a Britain people think is dead and gone.’

We’re talking at a restaurant in just such a chocolate-box Cotswolds village, close to where she’s lived alone since her husband Harry Gibbons, a former journalist, died in 2016. The waspish sense of humour and un-PC attitude loved by devotees of her writing are in evidence during our conversation.

When she began writing novels in 1979, she had also spent many years as a journalist, first in Glasgow, where she witnessed terrible poverty in the crime-ridden tenements. ‘There were lots of murders, razor gangs and middle-aged prostitutes with no teeth,’ she says. ‘It put me off real-life crime. It was so brutal.’

In the Sixties she worked on Fleet Street, where she got to know the TV presenter Anne Robinson. ‘There were hardly any women, so we became close friends,’ she says.

Ashley Jensen as amateur sleuth Agatha Raisin in the Sky TV series

Ashley Jensen as amateur sleuth Agatha Raisin in the Sky TV series

Their friendship has endured; during Beaton’s successful treatment for breast cancer in 2001, The Weakest Link’s formidable presenter visited her in hospital regularly. ‘On her way out, she’d tell the staff, “Do remember that Marion’s my best friend,” and terrify them all to make sure they looked after me well,’ she says, chuckling.

Despite her illness, she only gave up her packet-a-day smoking habit recently. ‘I miss it terribly, particularly when I’m writing,’ she says. ‘I hate the nanny state.’

Her first forays into fiction were Regency romances, for which she used the pen name Ann Fairfax. She’s disarmingly frank about her motivation, admitting: ‘I was out of work and I needed to pay my son’s school fees. You’re not supposed to say you write for money. But Dr Johnson said only a blockhead would write for anything else.’

 You’re not supposed to say you write for money, but I needed to pay for my son’s school fees

It was while she was living in New York in the Eighties that she first had the idea for a series of mystery novels set in the Scottish Highlands, featuring an unambitious but intuitive policeman named Hamish Macbeth.

‘I was desperate to get out of 1811, and I also wanted to write the kind of novels I enjoy reading myself,’ she says. ‘There wasn’t much in between Mills & Boon and the Booker Prize. All I ever wanted to do was tell stories and give some fun to people to pass a wet day or when they’re going through a bad time.’

The stories were made into a hit BBC series in the Nineties starring Robert Carlyle. Beaton was among the few viewers who didn’t like it.

‘The production company sneered at me, and they had my nice policeman smoking pot. I asked Robert Carlyle why and he said, “All policemen smoke pot,” ’ she says in a tone that reveals her scepticism about this claim.

Five other ‘cosy crime’ novels to enjoy

The Stone Circle 

Elly Griffiths 

Quercus £18.99 

The key to a great cosy series is a lovable central character – and there’s none more appealing than forensic archaeologist Ruth Galloway (not to mention her crew of unlikely helpers). 

A Shot In The Dark 

Lynne Truss 

Raven £12.99 

The consistently funny Lynne Truss has launched a new series of cosy crime novels set in Fifties Brighton and evoking the hallowed shades of the Ealing Comedies. 

The Road To Grantchester 

James Runcie 

Bloomsbury £14.99 

The brand new prequel to Runcie’s much-loved series takes Archdeacon Chambers right back to his time as a demobbed young soldier in post-war London. 

A Quarter Past Dead 

TP Fielden 

HQ £8.99 

A pitch-perfect tribute to the golden age of British crime writing, as Cornish Riviera reporter Judy Dimont finds trouble in paradise. 

Auntie Poldi And The Fruits Of The Lord 

Mario Giordano 

John Murray £8.99 

The second instalment in a charming Sicilian series sees the redoubtable Poldi taking on the Mafia. There’s only ever going to be one winner… 

John Williams

The Agatha Raisin adaptation, on the other hand, meets with her approval, despite Ashley Jensen bearing no resemblance to the frumpy Agatha of the books. ‘In the books she’s 53 with brown hair and comes from Birmingham, whereas Ashley’s younger, slimmer, blonde and Scottish. But she’s wonderful. She’s funny and she brings a warmth and vulnerability to the part.’

Happily for fans of the TV series, who are now discovering the books, she has no plans to retire, despite admitting that sometimes, writing is the very last thing she feels like doing. ‘I get a sudden inspiration to defrost the freezer or iron my sheets.’ But then she’ll overhear a conversation in the hairdressers or witness a couple arguing in the street and inspiration will strike. ‘As long as I find other people more interesting than I find myself, I’ll keep having ideas,’ she says. 

‘Agatha Raisin And The Dead Ringer’ is out now, published by Constable, priced £8.99. The first series of ‘Agatha Raisin’ is available on Sky TV. Series two will be on Sky One in July. MC Beaton will be appearing at the 2019 Theakston Old Peculier Crime Writing Festival in Harrogate. Tickets on sale from Tuesday