Agatha Raisin author MC Beaton dies aged 83

MC Beaton, creator of characters such as Agatha Raisin and Hamish Macbeth, died on the 30th December after a short illness.

Beaton, whose real name was Marion Chesney Gibbons, had been writing constantly since 1979 and another Agatha Raisin novel will be released in October 2020.

Her death was announced by her son Charles who said “the support of her fans and the success she enjoyed in her later years were a source of great pride and satisfaction to her, and for that I will be eternally grateful”.

Fans of the sleuth Agatha Raisin will agree that Beaton had a wicked sense of humour, and an inimitable Glaswegian charm. On hearing of her moniker ‘the queen of cosy crime’, Beaton was outraged, telling Crime Hub: “It is patronising and implies that my books, which are easy to read, must be easy to write. Nobody calls Agatha Christie cosy. To keep writing in clear well-balanced sentences takes a lot of hard work and if anyone doesn’t want a Glasgow kiss, swallow that opinion and put it where the sun don’t shine.”

The hard-working author had written over 160 novels to date with more to be published posthumously. Beaton told journalists that she was “not yet tired of Agatha or Hamish and have not lost the drive to write about them … Of course if the readers get tired of them, I shall kill them with a nice painless death.”

“If you really want to be a writer, then nothing will stop you. Nothing stopped me.”

Editor Krystyna Green who worked with the author for 23 years described her as “quite wicked – when she went on stage I would sit there thinking ‘oh god what’s she going to say?’ At Cheltenham literary festival she told the filthiest joke about Alex Salmond and said, ‘I see my editor sweating over there’.”

“I’m going to miss her dreadfully as after 23 years I’d grown from being in awe of her, to thinking she was absolutely wonderful – and very kind under her rather fierce exterior,” she added. “She was forthright and uncompromising and never afraid to express a view, no matter how unfashionable. She was funny, wise, and truly an inspiring, utterly unique individual. This is just such a sad end to the year.”