The Corpse in Oozak's Pond

Charlotte MacLeod

When the staff and students of Balaclaa Agricultural College are celebrating Groundhog's Day up at Oozak's Pond, they find a body in the water. The corpse resembles the college's founder, Balaclava Buggins, and is dressed in old fashioned clothes. In fact, he resembles the figure from a different Buggins family member's poem.

Then the college president receives a letter from the "wrong side" of the Buggins family. They are claiming the land belonged to their ancestor, not Balaclava. They believe they are owed 100 years' worth of water payments and reparation. The president goes to Peter Shandy, agriculture professor and amateur sleuth, to find out what is going on and discover the truth.

As Shandy starts investigating, another death is discovered. The oldest living Buggins couple are found dead in their bed the next morning by their live in housekeeper. She had been gone the night before when they were poisoned by their own moonshine. The couple would have benefited from the suit against the college. Shandy wonders how the corpse resembling a Buggins ancestor, the eldery couple and the suit against the college tie together.

My sister has been recommending Charlotte MacLeod's books for years. She lent me two of them a while ago. I finally got to my borrowed pile and read The Corpse In Oozak's Pond. It a good cozy who done it. Shandy is a likeable character who is stable in his life with his wife Helen and their cat Jane Austen.

The Corpse in Oozak's Pond is also a well written mystery. MacLeod does an excellent job of setting up the mystery and keeping the reader in suspense. I followed Shandy's steps, but didn't put together the clues he had to solve the mystery (although I had an inkling on parts of it). Yes, I'll have to read more of Charlotte MacLeod's novels..

Rest You Merry
The Luck Runs Out
Wrack and Rune
Something the Cat Dragged In
The Curse of the Giant Hogweed
The Corpse in Oozak's Pond
Vane Pursuit
An Owl Too Many
Something in the Water
Exit the Milkman