"Fine amateur sleuth cozy"

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

Reviewed by Harriet Klausner
Posted November 10, 2002

Summary

Maynard Spence was getting married. To celebrate, he bought a BMW convertible. The problem was, car dealer Skellton MacDonald had already promised that car to somebody else. Only because Skell was late to work did his father, Skye MacDonald, sell Maynard the car.

MacLaren Yarbrough doesn't consider any of that her problem until Maynard and Selena go on their honeymoon and wind up in jail because of the car. Meanwhile, Skell has disappeared, and Skye has been found lying dead on a dirt road just inside the city limits. The grief of Skye's wife Gwen Ellen, whom MacLaren has known all her life and, in fact, used to babysit, drives Mac to begin asking, "Who ran over Skye MacDonald with his own car and left him dead on a deserted road? Who left that body in the rain?"