As a British mystery set in the countryside, starring a female detective named Agatha no less, it would be easy to mistake The Perfect Paragon as one of the "cozy" novels popularized by Agatha Christie, the genre's grand dame.

However, this popular series features murders and mayhem just as harsh as any of its hard-boiled cousins, and its spirited protagonist Agatha Raisin is no shrinking violet.

Agatha's 16th adventure finds her at home in the deceptively quaint village of Carsely, a delicate hamlet of stone cottages and lovely gardens in the English Cotswalds. A retired public relations executive, Agatha is still trying to reconcile her straightforward big-city approach with her gossipy and narrow-minded neighbors. Far from the hustle and bustle of London, most of her cases are negotiated over tea with members of the Carsley Ladies' Society.

Nevertheless, she has moved up in the world, evolving beyond amateur status and opening a full-fledged detective agency that unfortunately attracts little more than cases involving missing animals and the occasional divorce.

When teenager Jessica Bradley goes missing, the agency is thrust into high gear. Agatha is manipulated by the vicar's wife into hiring the aged Phil Witherspoon for camera and surveillance work. Her off-again, on-again friend Sir Charles Fraith joins the fray, as does young Harry Beam, her secretary's nephew, who quickly proves himself capable of more than tracking down missing cats.

It doesn't take long for Agatha and Phil to find the girl's corpse. No candlesticks in the conservatory here - the girl's murder is far from the bloodless events of other village mysteries.

"Snakes and bastards," muttered Agatha, heaving herself up on one elbow and twisting round to see what had tripped her. She found herself looking into a pair of staring dead eyes and flung herself backwards.

Jessica Bradley, naked from the waist down, and half covered with branches which had been torn out of the ground and put over the body to conceal it, lay sprawled like a broken doll. Agatha knew it was Jessica from the pink sequined crop top, which had a huge bloodstain over most of the front.

The team of detectives gets embroiled in another ugly case when Robert Smedley, an electronics magnate, hires Agatha to follow his wife, whom he suspects of adultery. When he is found poisoned in his office, events unfold quickly. Agatha and her boys chase leads all over the Cotswalds and ultimately all the way to Spain, untangling a nasty story that belies the story's gentrified setting.

Beaton's articulate writing demonstrates her talent for building a solidly constructed plot while avoiding the clichés inherent in the genre. However, the beating heart of the Agatha Raisin series is the gruff detective herself. The reason that these books are so compelling is not their tranquil setting but that readers get to see both the Cotswalds and its unusual inhabitants through Agatha's cynical viewpoint.

Beaton has drawn a convincing portrait of a 50-something woman not on the verge of slowing down but instead fighting tooth and nail against her own desperate insecurities. At work, Agatha is bad-tempered, domineering and overly convinced of her own abilities. It's a terrific contrast, then, when Beaton allows us to see Agatha's vulnerable interior.

Yet there is still a distinctive sense of humor in the series. Agatha is not a very good detective, and while the books' crimes are surprisingly harsh coming from a former romance novelist, they often serve as merely the vehicle to ignite Agatha's wrath. Par for the course, she bumbles her way through her cases, taking advantage of her friends and, in many cases, sheer dumb luck.

It's Agatha's faults, after all, that make her so appealing. Agatha Raisin may be far removed from her gun-toting American contemporaries, but if you're looking for a mystery comfortably out of the ordinary, she just may be your cup of tea.

Clayton Moore is a freelance writer whose work has appeared in Atomic Magazine, Dirty Linen, Bookslut and About.com. He lives in Colorado Springs.