As the Pig Turns: An Agatha Raisin Mystery

At the start of Beaton's entertaining 22nd Agatha Raisin mystery (after 2010's Busy Body), Agatha has a run-in with an overzealous policeman, Gary Beech, who tickets her for basically nothing on a clogged road outside her Cotswolds village of Carsely. After Beech tickets her a second time for slightly exceeding the speed limit, Agatha announces in the village store: "I'd like to kill him.... May he roast slowly over a spit in hell!" When Beech turns up dead, his decapitated body substituted for the pig that was supposed to be roasting over a fire as part of a post-Christmas celebration on a neighboring village's green, Agatha falls under suspicion. Meanwhile, she must cope with, among other personal problems, uncertainty about the men in her life, including her ex-husband. That even in a heavy fog those basting the "pig" fail to notice that it's a human being may strike some as less than credible. (Oct.)