When Did We Lose Harriet?

Rating:
Summary: I absolutely loved the book and the new character!
Review: Having read all of Patricia's mysteries, I found to my surprise, that I really liked this new character best. Perhaps that's because I can relate to her age and the time in her life. I am waiting with excitement for the next installment. Go Patty!

Rating:
Summary: New series and a spunky, curious, caring woman you'll love!
Review: Patricia Sprinkle's Sheila Travis mysteries have given me pleasurable reading ... and rereading. I always hope for one more, expecting to spend a few hours with people I like, learning some lore of southern states I have yet to visit, chuckling at a deft touch of humor, and seeing a good mystery unfold. As a veteran of the challenges of book selection for congregational libraries, I was delighted to hear that Patricia Sprinkle had created a new mystery series heroine whose first adventure would be published by Zondervan. I've read WHEN DID WE LOSE HARRIET twice in the last few weeks, and it's all there again. MacLaren Yarbrough, at sixty-plus, in Montgomery to help bully her younger brother into the crucial heart surgery he needs, takes his shift at the teen center, and rapidly becomes involved in determining the fate of 15-year-old Harriet, missing now for six weeks. Strangely, no one else seems to care. Whether it is deep concern or innate nosiness, MacLaren precipitates events that need all her insight, pluckiness, salty wit, and tenacious faith to understand. I found the people, the humor, the sense of place, and a good mystery, as I expected. Plus, Patricia Sprinkle is superb at showing that MacLaren's faith is realistic, down-to-earth, integrally part of her character, as much as her big-sister attitude to brother Jake or her inability to let a riddle go unsolved, all revealed without fanfare throughout the story. HARRIET is a very good read for any mystery fan, and a gem for a church fiction collection. I look forward to the next title (this year hopefully).

Rating:
Summary: New series and a spunky, curious, caring woman you'll love!
Review: Patricia Sprinkle's Sheila Travis mysteries have given me pleasurable reading ... and rereading. I always hope for one more, expecting to spend a few hours with people I like, learning some lore of southern states I have yet to visit, chuckling at a deft touch of humor, and seeing a good mystery unfold. As a veteran of the challenges of book selection for congregational libraries, I was delighted to hear that Patricia Sprinkle had created a new mystery series heroine whose first adventure would be published by Zondervan. I've read WHEN DID WE LOSE HARRIET twice in the last few weeks, and it's all there again. MacLaren Yarbrough, at sixty-plus, in Montgomery to help bully her younger brother into the crucial heart surgery he needs, takes his shift at the teen center, and rapidly becomes involved in determining the fate of 15-year-old Harriet, missing now for six weeks. Strangely, no one else seems to care. Whether it is deep concern or innate nosiness, MacLaren precipitates events that need all her insight, pluckiness, salty wit, and tenacious faith to understand. I found the people, the humor, the sense of place, and a good mystery, as I expected. Plus, Patricia Sprinkle is superb at showing that MacLaren's faith is realistic, down-to-earth, integrally part of her character, as much as her big-sister attitude to brother Jake or her inability to let a riddle go unsolved, all revealed without fanfare throughout the story. HARRIET is a very good read for any mystery fan, and a gem for a church fiction collection. I look forward to the next title (this year hopefully).

Rating:
Summary: Feisty new sleuth seeks a child who is missing, not missed.
Review: This is my first book in a new series featuring amateur sleuth MacLaren Yarbrough, a feisty woman on the sunny side of sixty. She and her husband Joe Riddley Yarbrough, a Georgia magistrate, are small town Georgians--a departure from my last series featuring cosmopolitan Sheila Travis and her redoubtable Aunt Mary Beaufort. In this first MacLaren book, when MacLaren finds an envelope full of money in an inner city teen center, she plans to return it to the owner and concentrate on her brother Jake, who's just had a heart attack. Mac discovers she not only cannot find Harriet, the money's owner, she can't find anybody who remembers the last time they SAW Harriet. Can a teen disappear without a trace? Was it by her choice--or someone else's? Set in Montgomery, Alabama, this story ranges from the inner city to the exclusive suburbs as MacLaren tries to find out when we lost Harriet, and how. The book is light, funny, sometimes cozy and sometimes scary as it explores what makes families do what they do to one another. In the sequel, BUT WHY SHOOT THE MAGISTRATE?--to be released by Zondervan in Sept. '97--MacLaren faces every amateur sleuth's nightmare when the person she loves best suffers the consequences of her own sleuthing. I'm giving WHEN DID WE LOSE HARRIET? an 8 rating because southern mothers teach their daughters not to brag, but I hope you'll really like the book and this new sleuth.

Rating:
Summary: Great Mystery!
Review: This was a great mystery! The criminal was not obvious, and they had possible suspects in which had nothing to do with this! I thought that the criminal would be obvious, but when I read the end I had it all figured out. It had different stories that made the criminal look obvious.

Rating:
Summary: Great Mystery!
Review: This was a great mystery! The criminal was not obvious, and they had possible suspects in which had nothing to do with this! I thought that the criminal would be obvious, but when I read the end I had it all figured out. It had different stories that made the criminal look obvious.