Author RW Green: ‘Agatha Raisin will die with me.’

Fictional detective Agatha Raisin is leaving her Cotswolds home to jet off to Mallorca in her latest adventure, Killing Time, with author RW Green taking up the writing baton from his friend MC Beaton – known to her neighbours near Moreton-in-Marsh as Marion Chesney – who died at the end of 2019. Here RW, or Rod, explains how he is helping Agatha to live on

‘Agatha Raisin will die with me.’

That was what MC Beaton (Marion) declared during one of our infrequent chats many, many years ago. We used to meet from time to time at publishing events and, both being Scottish, both having been journalists and both being authors, we always had something to talk about. She was insatiably inquisitive and loved finding out where I’d been on foreign holidays, comparing notes about places and their inhabitants, at which point she’d have a story or two to tell about characters she or her late husband had met in far-flung places.

MC Beaton (Image: Little Brown) We rarely, however, talked about her books – that would have been too much like work. At those publishing events, you see, she would have to talk to lots of people about her latest book. Often the event would actually be the launch of her new book. I always felt that, for her, I was a kind of antidote to work. She was happy to chat with me about anything except her new book which, I think, helped her relax enough to do deal with everyone who needed her to talk about whatever Agatha Raisin was getting up to in her latest adventure.

At the time when she apparently sealed poor Agatha’s fate, Marion was in her seventies and probably working on A Spoonful of Poison or There Goes the Bride, which were the nineteenth and twentieth books in the Agatha Raisin series. Given that this was not the only long-running series Marion had written (she’d published several series of romantic fiction and, of course, the Hamish Macbeth murder mysteries) questions were put to her about how series like those can be sustained. What is it that keeps them going? Marion’s answer to that was always quite simple – the characters keep a series going. Agatha Raisin is supported by a regular cast of characters who play greater or lesser roles in each book, stepping up to drive the story forward when they’re needed. When asked what would happen when she retired, Marion’s usual response was that she would never retire, prompting the ominous assertion about Agatha’s demise.

It was a few years later when Marion was laid low by what everyone, including her, believed was a temporary illness, that I became a kind of ‘apprentice’, working with her to help her finish the Agatha Raisin book she was writing and to make a start on the next in the series. I’ve written in the forewords to subsequent books about how she tested me, and teased me, to make sure I knew who the characters surrounding Agatha were and how they generally behaved towards one another. Having done my homework, I was proud to pass the tests, even when it came to some minor characters who had simply disappeared, dropping off the radar between books. When I asked about them, Marion dismissed them with a wave of her hand. She’d got bored with them and didn’t see the point in them any more, so they’d been quietly binned.

Ashley Jensen as Agatha Raisin (Image: Acorn TV) One thing that became clear to me right from the beginning of our working relationship was that the most important member of Agatha’s supporting cast wasn’t actually one of her team, it was the setting. The Cotswolds. Marion very much believed in the old maxim that writers should write about what they know. Marion lived in the Cotswolds, loved the area, loved watching the changing of its seasons and loved delving into its history and folklore. Agatha’s home in the fictional village of Carsely, as well as the nearby fictional city of Mircester are just two of the invented locations where Agatha investigates murder. There are many others and they all somehow fit unobtrusively into the Cotswolds landscape. Agatha visits plenty of real Cotswold places, which help to give the fictional settings some veracity, but Marion insisted on a cast-iron rule that nothing bad should happen anywhere that actually exists. Agatha Raisin stories are intended to be entertaining and a little light-hearted, so we don’t want to tarnish them by upsetting anyone in leaving a corpse on their doorstep! Agatha has never, however, been confined to the Cotswolds, having made fleeting visits to some of Marion’s favourite places in France, Cyprus, Turkey and even South America. In the new book, Killing Time, she jets off to the Spanish island of Mallorca. Marion was a great Agatha Christie fan, and passed her passion on to Agatha. When I suggested that Agatha might one day visit Mallorca and stay in Pollensa (one of my favourite places) at the hotel where Agatha Christie had written Problem at Pollensa Bay, Marion was all for it, although it took several books to get her there! You can only use ideas when they’re helping to progress the story.

Sometimes, having sent me off to write up some of the ideas and plot developments we had discussed, watching Marion read through what I had done was very much like being back at primary school, sitting in front of the teacher’s desk, waiting while she marked my homework. This was the ‘teasing’ I mentioned earlier. She loved watching me squirm. I think she was pleased to see that I cared enough about the writing to want her to give me a gold star. I’m also delighted to say that she never actually picked me up on more than a couple of words here and there. I’m very proud that she was comfortable for us to carry on working together. It was a big step for her. She was adapting from having worked on her own for thirty years to writing with a co-author. Like the book characters she no longer needed and the story ideas we had discussed that didn’t make the grade, the notion that ‘Agatha Raisin will die with me’ was quietly binned.

RW Green (Image: Supplied) It came as a huge shock to everyone when Marion died at the end of 2019. Prior to her passing, we had been talking through lots of ideas and, for me, it felt like I had lost a great friend and travelling companion on a journey that we had barely begun. It has been an enormous privilege for me to be able to carry on not only with Agatha but with the Hamish Macbeth stories. It gives me the best possible excuse to visit the Cotswolds (and Scotland!) as often as I like. The scenery and history provide no end of inspiration – lots of ideas for new perils Agatha will have to endure. Yet, if I’m ever stuck wondering how Agatha might deal with a situation, all I have to do is think how Marion would handle it. I’m sure she’s there, looking over my shoulder, making sure I’m taking care of her characters, checking that any new cast members I’ve introduced are earning their keep.