Agatha’s First Case

M. C. Beaton (1936–2019) won international acclaim for her New York Times bestselling Agatha Raisin novels and Hamish Macbeth mysteries. Her Agatha Raisin and Hamish Macbeth titles have sold more than 21 million copies worldwide and have both been adapted into BBC television series. She has been hailed as the “Queen of Crime” by the Toronto Globe and Mail, and her books have been translated into seventeen languages.

Alison Larkin was born in Washington, DC, adopted at six weeks old by British parents, and raised in England and Africa. After graduating from Royal Holloway College, London University, and the Webber-Douglas Academy of Dramatic Art, she became a playwright and classical actress on the British stage. Then, at twenty-eight, she found her birth mother, who was living in Bald Mountain, Tennessee. The experience turned her into a stand-up comic. She was soon headlining at the Comic Strip in New York and the Comedy Store in Los Angeles, while maintaining her theatrical career. She also spent three years under a studio development contract to star in her own sitcom with ABC, CBS, and Jim Henson Productions. Her unusually wide range of voices can be heard in cartoons and movies, from work by James Cameron and Robert Altman to Pocahontas and The Wonder Pets. The audiobook of The English American, narrated by Alison, won an AudioFile Earphones Award.