Who Left That Body in the Rain?: A Thoroughly Southern Mystery

Except for the first two books, I have read all of Patricia Sprinkle's Thoroughly Southern Mystery series to date and have loved each one. The stories envelop the reader in the cozy comfort of visiting with old friends, without ever letting them overstay their welcome. Each book reveals something new about returning favorites and introduces enough new friends, family members, and villains to keep things fresh and interesting. The mysteries are clever, intriguing, complex. The setting is rich in the regional flavors, customs, and manners of the small-town South, but never at the expense of other cultures or groups of people. This series never disappoints. I hope Signet will one day offer BUT WHY SHOOT THE MAGISTRATE? and WHEN DID WE LOSE HARRIET? in the same style as the rest of the series so my collection may be complete.

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!

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.

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

I absolutely loved this book from one of my favorite authors. Patricia is a masterful wordsmith; her illustrations truly come alive. Her characters are so very real and so very southern. I especially appreciate the fact that Mac is not a spring chicken like so many other detectives I read about And this mystery really worked.Thanks, Patricia!!