Agatha Raisin is tying the knot with James Lacey before he can have second thoughts. After all, her first husband must be long dead of alcohol poisoning. But Jimmy Raisin hears the news in his cardboard residence in London and reaches the village of Carsely just in time to stop Agatha from committing bigamy. Promptly jilted by her groom, Agatha pushes Jimmy in a ditch--where he is later found strangled.

While acting as the public relations person for a mineral water company hoping to use water from a spring in a nearby village, Agatha finds the village council chairman murdered.

The curmudgeonly yet irresistable Agatha Raisin finds herself addicted to Mr John, her wizard of a hairdresser. Agatha continues to pine for her ex-fiance James, but she has time to snoop into the possibility that Mr John may really be a ruthless blackmailer.

After six months in London, Agatha Raisin returns to her beloved Cotswold village -- and her dashing neighbor, James Lacey, and a dead woman found in a field nearby.