Agatha Raisin looked at the quiche on her kitchen counter and felt a rare prickle of guilt. It was golden, flaky, and smelled divine—mostly because it had been baked by an expert at a high-end London deli, not by Agatha herself.

The news hit Carsely faster than a summer storm: Reg Cummings was dead. He had been found slumped over his kitchen table, and the cause was quite clear. The spinach and cowhide-mushroom quiche—Agatha’s quiche—had been laced with a highly effective, very lethal dose of hemlock.

She had moved to the tiny village of Carsely to live the dream of a retired PR executive. But the Cotswolds were proving to be less of a pastoral escape and more of a social minefield. The local Quiche Competition was her ticket to instant prestige, and Agatha wasn't about to let a little thing like "honesty" get in the way.