The Corpse in Oozak's Pond

Charlotte MacLeod

Nov 2012 · The Peter Shandy Mysteries Book 6 · Open Road Media

About this ebook

A copycat crime on Groundhog Day brings out Professor Peter Shandy’s inner sleuth in this Edgar Award finalist from the international bestselling author.

The rural town of Balaclava greets Groundhog Day as an excuse for one last cold-weather fling. The students and faculty of the local agricultural college drink cocoa, throw snowballs, and when the temperature allows, ice skate. But Oozak’s Pond is not quite frozen this year, and as the celebrations reach their peak, the students see someone bobbing through the ice. Long past help, the drowning victim is badly decomposed and dressed in an old-fashioned frock coat with a heavy rock in each pocket.

First on the scene is Peter Shandy, horticulturalist and—when the college requires it—detective. But solving this nineteenth-century murder mystery will take more than Shandy’s knack for growing rutabagas. Relying on his wife’s expertise in local history, the professor dives headfirst into a gilded-age whodunit that cloaks secrets potent enough to kill.

Ratings and reviews

Another fabulous entry into the Peter Shandy series. This one is probably my second favorite. Though the killer I found to be fairly obvious, the accomplices I was slightly taken aback by. This one was almost exclusively Peter and Helen, I do wish Thorkjeld would make a bigger contribution, but young Swope was pretty prominent again. The poetry of Corydon is rather pedestrian in my opinion.

This was the second of Charlotte MacLeod's books I read and it made me glad I read the first one, "The Silver Ghost".

About the author

Charlotte MacLeod (1922–2005) was an international-bestselling author of cozy mysteries. Born in Canada, she moved to Boston as a child and lived in New England most of her life. After graduating from college, she made a career in advertising, writing copy for the Stop & Shop Supermarket Company before moving on to Boston firm N. H. Miller & Co., where she rose to the rank of vice president. In her spare time, MacLeod wrote short stories, and in 1964 she published her first novel, a children’s book called Mystery of the White Knight.
 In Rest You Merry (1978), MacLeod introduced Professor Peter Shandy, a horticulturist and amateur sleuth whose adventures she would chronicle for two decades. The Family Vault (1979) marked the first appearance of her other best-known characters: the husband and wife sleuthing team Sarah Kelling and Max Bittersohn, whom she followed until her last novel, The Balloon Man, in 1998.