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What a veritable treat! Patricia Sprinkle's descriptions are like stained glass in the sunlight. Anyone who has ever been on a bus tour, or dreamed of taking one, will certainly enjoy DID YOU DECLARE THE CORPSE. Though it reads like the bus tour from hell, the characters seem very real and certainly after a bus tour or two any traveler will recognize someone they wish had never been on 'their' trip. DID YOU DECLARE THE CORPSE is the sixth novel in a series featuring MacLaren Yarbrough, a magistrate in a small town in Central Georgia and covers her adventures on a bus tour of Scotland to see the village her MacLaren ancestors emigrated from. Her husband has sent her off to accompany a recently bereaved friend who is taking the tour. He, on the other hand, is taking their son and grandsons to the Gulf of Mexico for fishing. MacLaren is told to relax and enjoy herself, as if she can while worrying about whether her grandsons are drowning without the men even noticing. That actually ends up being the least of her worries. The tour is supposed to be made up of 25 passengers but only eight show up; two of which are two hours late after having gone shopping first. What, with the tour guide willing to begin the trip with only eight of the passengers, the driver appearing to be a man too old to even have a license, and the bus definitely beyond the hope of passing a vehicle inspection, MacLaren has good reason to wonder if she should have said 'no' to taking this trip. Places on the itinerary are skipped, others added, and all the while one passenger keeps saying they are seeing everything at the wrong time of year, or some other place would have been more interesting. One gentleman wants to get out at every stop and play the bagpipes, and one couple is constantly battling with each other over everything. The ultimate destination is the tiny village of Auchnagar. Once in Auchnagar the tension builds and includes the local laird and his wife, the postmistress, and the owner of a local guest house, among others. After a day or two everyone in the tour group is acting strange. One wants to build a hotel and golf course in partnership with the laird and his wife. MacLaren's young friend is 'sitting up half the night with a married man.' Another is 'buying heavy woolens to take back to South Georgia.' And yet another is 'more than half smitten with and working illegally for a tall, good-looking giant who had a girl in Aberdeen.' And, it appears the real reason that the tour's destination was Auchnagar was for the tour guide to put on a play she has written. When two coffins are delivered to the church supposedly for the play and no one ordered them, and the locals can't identify the bodies, the pace picks up to a feverish pitch to the surprise ending. Sprinkle has a fresh voice, humor, and excellent plotting. I look forward to reading the previous novels in the series and hope there are many to come.
Reviewed by Ginger K. W. Stratton, May 2006
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