Crime writer MC Beaton to appear at Oxford Literary Festival

Meet the most borrowed adult British author from UK public libraries – Cotswolds crime writer MC Beaton, whose detective Agatha Raisin has been called “as much of a national treasure as Miss Marple or Poirot, but with PR nous and a mild drinking problem”.

If you haven’t heard of her, it may be that you prefer the violence, gloom and angst of Scandi noir to the "cosy mystery" that Agatha is said by her publishers to represent.

However, there are plenty of surprises in store for anyone who looks behind the pen-name. The author’s real name is Marion Chesney and although, like Agatha, she now lives in a picturesque Cotswolds village, she grew up in Glasgow, where she worked as a journalist. In fact, she loves Nordic detectives and knows far too much about the hard streets of urban realism: "I grew up in a council house in a working-class area, with tradesmen.

"My father was a tradesman and we moved out to a private house, but then I lived in a shared flat when I worked for the magazine Scottish Field. Then I became a crime reporter and suddenly I was reporting from the Gorbals and some of the worst tenements in Western Europe with razor gangs running rampage. When I transferred to London it was like coming out of hell, but I missed the people. In Glasgow they are very quirky and kind. But I was a city person so I didn’t find New York very strange when my husband got a job there.”

Her career writing fiction started after she gave birth to her son Charles. “I was desperate to do something at home and earn money because my son was quite young and they had lost control of the streets in New York – though where we lived was quite safe because it was under the Mafia and they were busy killing each other. I used to read Georgette Heyer and she died, but the imitators were rubbish.

"My husband said: ‘Why don’t you write something yourself then?’ So I did.”

Her first pen name was Jennie Tremain. “Then my publisher wanted Regency so I was Ann Fairfax, then Helen Crampton and Charlotte Ward. At times when the phone rang I didn’t know who they wanted.”

Having run out of steam with historical fiction, she started writing detective stories as M C Beaton. Inspired by a group fishing trip, she invented Scottish detective Hamish Macbeth, a police officer who lives in such an authentically scenic part of the Highlands that it is no surprise that the books inspired a TV series starring Robert Carlyle.

Her next sleuth, Agatha Raisin, was born more than 20 years ago, after the author moved from Scotland to the Cotswolds. “My son’s housemaster said ‘the boy’s going to Oxford (in fact he went to Cambridge) and we thought it was silly to rent in London so we found somewhere to rent in Blockley and we liked it so much we bought the house next door. I had always been a city person, but now if I go to London, I am just waiting to come back again.”

Far from being cosy, Agatha represents the part of the author she has to keep under wraps. “Like Agatha, I smoke (oh dear!), and drink black coffee. She has a mink coat which gets attacked by animal libbers. There are things that I would like to say, but I am too polite, so Agatha can say them.”

If you have ever crossed swords with the author, perhaps 60 years ago in a Glasgow schoolroom, you might reappear in fictional form and find your alter ego murdered by poisoned quiche or hanging from the church belltower. “I always choose people the reader would want dead, and I never have dead children,” she says.

Like Patsy in Absolutely Fabulous, Agatha never grows up. Unlike the author, who has been married to the same man (Daily Express former Middle East correspondent Harry Scott Gibbons) since 1969, Agatha is a notorious man-chaser, lusting after the local gardener (who is later murdered), and complaining about husbands and boyfriends past.

As for Agatha Raisin’s deceptively idyllic Cotswolds village of Carsley, the author says it is an amalgam of several places, with most of the murders taking place in the area around Moreton-in-Marsh. Agatha does visit Oxford — usually to investigate suspects or meet fellow detectives — but so far she has not added to the city’s considerable fictional body count.

“I will leave that to Colin Dexter, because he has really made it his own,” she said.

Fans include actor Elizabeth Hurley and former Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams, captivated, perhaps, by Agatha’s all-too-human faults of vanity and counter suggestibility. Like Agatha Christie’s Miss Marple, Agatha hides an astonishing toughness under an apparently fragile exterior.

With approaching 200 titles under her belt, at the age of 78 the author still aims to finish two novels a year. Although the writing is tongue-in-cheek, she takes her responsibility to readers very seriously. “It gets harder. The plots have to be very complicated and they have to be fresh.”

Ashley Jensen as Agatha Raisin

Agatha and the Quiche of Death was filmed in a Christmas TV special for Sky, and the author is still adjusting to becoming a local celebrity, and being recognised in Cotswolds tearooms. But she quickly discounts the idea that she has been hiding her light under a bushel until now.

“I wish it had all happened earlier, but it’s only really taken off in the last few years. I have had the same New York agent for nearly 40 years and she has sold me all over the world. I’ve just heard Korea are taking Hamishes.”

She added: “I am very lucky not to have to retire. It’s as if there’s a muscle in my brain that somehow I have just got to write. As long as the books are successful and my brain keeps working, I will keep going.

“I never wanted to be a literary writer. I wanted to be an entertainer. All I wanted was to give what a lot of writers had given me: a good time on a bad day.”

* The Blood of an Englishman, the latest Agatha Raisin mystery by MC Beaton, is out in paperback this June. A special edition of Agatha Raisin and the Quiche of Death features on the list of 20 books to be given away free during World Book Night 2015 on April 23. 

* MC Beaton will be speaking at the Oxford Literary Festival on March 23 (tickets from oxfordliteraryfestival.org or from Blackwell’s Bookshop, 48-51 Broad Street, Oxford OX1 3BQ) and is also appearing at the Chipping Norton Literary Festival on April 26.