Who Left that Body in the Rain? (Thoroughly Southern Mysteries, No. 4) [Large Print] [Hardcover]

Patricia Houck Sprinkle (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: February 2003

This brand new Thoroughly Southern Mystery from the author of Who Invited the Dead Man? finds Georgia magistrate MacLaren Yarbrough investigating the murder of a dear family friend-and uncovering more dark secrets about their lives than she ever wanted to know.

--This text refers to the Mass Market Paperback edition.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 289 pages
• Publisher: Thomas T Beeler (February 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1574904647
• ISBN-13: 978-1574904642
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.4 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (13 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,278,430 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Sprinkle creates a vivid sense of location --, May 10, 2004

By 

M. C. Crammer (Decatur, GA USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

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This review is from: Who Left that Body in the Rain? (Thoroughly Southern Mysteries, No. 4) (Hardcover)

A small town in Georgia. Her "detective" "Mac" is a 60-something married woman (part-time magistrate and co-owner of the family nursery business). Mac is surrounded by friends, family, and neighbors, and the town she describes is so real you can picture it in your mind. This book almost begs to be made into a movie.

It is February in middle Georgia, and the heavy rain never stops. A friend of Mac and her husband is found lying in the rain, hit by a car -- his own, as it turns out, but the car is found parked in a church some distance away, so this was no accident. How could someone else get behind the wheel of his car and run him down?

The incompetent police chief decides it must be a Mexican new to town, and Mac ends up trying to find out who killed her friend -- she's convinced it wasn't the chief suspect, but she fears it may be a family member or someone else close to the victim.

It is only fair to warn readers that Mac is a Christian and the book is sprinkled with her religious views -- not oppressively so, but somewhat surprisingly so, for a book that I would not classify as a "Christian mystery."

This was my first book by this author but I've already ordered another. She is a delightful find.

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars delightful amateur sleuth cozy, January 18, 2003

By 

Harriet Klausner - See all my reviews
(#1 Hall OF FAME REVIEWER)    (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Who Left that Body in the Rain? (Thoroughly Southern Mysteries, No. 4) (Mass Market Paperback)

The quiet town of Hopemore, Georgia is the home of local Court magistrate Judge MacLaren Yarbrough, part owner of Yarbrough's Feed, Seed and Nursery. She counts her blessings especially when it comes to her husband Joe Riddley who is recovering nicely from a head wound that almost killed him. Her next door neighbor Maynard is getting married soon and he has bought himself a BMW, one that he intends to keep no matter that Skell Macdonald is offering him a fantastic deal to buy it back.

Shortly after Maynard and his bride go on their honeymoon, Skell disappears. At the same time, Skell's father Sky, a popular civic-minded town leader is run over by his own car. While the family grieves, the honeymooners are arrested in Orlando for transporting drugs. The police chief and MacLaren feel Skell knows something about this but the magistrate doesn't believe the missing man could have killed his father. She starts her own investigation and almost gets killed by a murderer who has nothing left to lose.

WHO LEFT THAT BODY IN THE RAIN? is an amateur sleuth cozy in which all the violence takes place outside of the pages of the book. There is no blood and gore but there is plenty of thrills and excitement as the sixty-something sleuth uncovers a host of buried secrets and a surplus of suspects. Readers who are fans of Carolyn Hart and Kate Kingsbury will want to buy Patricia Sprinkle's latest and that will lead to desiring the author's previous mysteries.

Harriet Klausner

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Good Mystery, October 21, 2006

By 

Andrea "Readaholic" (USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: Who Left that Body in the Rain? (Thoroughly Southern Mysteries, No. 4) (Mass Market Paperback)

I had a hard time deciding whether I should give it 5 stars or 4 stars, because it took me a long time to get into this book and get interested in the characters. I didn't really care for the setting. To me, it wasn't really cozy enough.

The writing was good. The clues/twists/surprises were clever. The more pages I read, the better it got. When I got to the last 100 pages, I couldn't put it down. It was so interesting, and it kept getting even more interesting by the page.

So while I was deciding whether this deserved a low 5 or a high 4, the last 100 pages convinced me to give it a 5. The last 100 pages were so good - those pages in themselves deserved a very high 5!