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    The Cart Before The Corpse
    The Cart Before The Corpse
    The Cart Before The Corpse
    Ebook381 pages9 hours

    The Cart Before The Corpse

    By Carolyn McSparren

    3.5/5

    ()

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    About this ebook


    Famous southern carriage-horse trainer Hiram Lackland, a handsome widower, dies mysteriously after retiring to a farm outside Mossy Creek. His estranged daughter, Merry Abbott, also a horse trainer, arrives to settle his estate. But Merry quickly plunges into bit-chomping dilemmas when her father's friend and landlord, mystery-novel maven Peggy Caldwell, insists he was murdered. Before Merry can so much as snap a buggy rein, a handsome and annoying GBI investigator, Geoff Madison, is on her case. Then there's the troublesome donkey: Don Qui. Short for Don Quixote. And the fact that Hiram was teaching all of Mossy Creek's lonely women how to--ahem--drive his carriage. Can Merry rein in the truth? What kind of horse play was her rakish dad involved in, and why would someone want to giddy-yup him into an early grave?
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherBelleBooks
    Release dateOct 1, 2009
    ISBN9781935661498
    The Cart Before The Corpse
    Author

    Carolyn McSparren

    Horses are important to the characters in most of Cariolyn McSparren's Harlequin romances.She rides a 17.2 hand half Clydesdale and drives a 16.2 hand half Shire mare to a carriage..Carolyn has won three Maggie Awards and was twice a finalist for the Rita Award.She has lived in Germany, France, Italy, and twoo many cikties in the U.S.A. to count. She holds a master's degree in English.She lives in an old house outside Memphis, Tenessee, with three cats,three horses and one husband,.

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    Reviews for The Cart Before The Corpse

    3.5/5

    15 ratings15 reviews

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    • 3/5
      I received an PDF of this for early reviewers, which was probably the biggest drawback, as it was difficult to sit and read it for long periods of time. I didn't really notice any editing problems with the copy I had. Being a fan of horses I enjoyed this side of the story, the technical part was interesting for me as I don't know a lot about buggy racing. I also enjoyed the mystery element of the story. I may've been more invested in the characters if I'd read the Mossy Creek series, but this is okay to read as a stand alone. All in all, I enjoyed the book enough to read other books in the series.
    • 5/5
      Hiram Lackland has moved to Mossy Creek and is living in the apartment Peggy Caldwell has renovated. When he is suddenly found dead, lying under the wheel of a carriage he has been trying to restore, Peggy gets suspicious.Hiram's daughter, Merry Abbott, comes to Mossy Creek to take care of her father's estate and finds herself involved in solving his murder. All the Mossy Creek characters are there, and Mossy Creek is just as nutty as ever.I really liked this book. I was left wondering who did it until the end. The end was a complete surprise!
    • 3/5
      This was an e-book.Merry Abbott is called to Mossy Creek when her father dies unexpectedly. Merry is divorced and organizes horsing events for a living. Her father, Hiram, drove horse carriages in races until he grew too old for racing. Upon his death, he was training horses and restoring carriages and other antiques. Merry and Hiram, though estranged through much of Merry's life, were getting to know each other recently and looking forward to spending some time together.Hiram's landlady, Peggy, believes Hiram was murdered. She and Merry try to find his killer, but find themselves targeted too. I know nothing about the horse business but could follow along pretty well. This would be a great cozy for readers who do know about horse shows and carriage races. Merry and Peggy are fun female characters. I also liked the Georgia Bureau of Investigation agent, Geoff. And I can't forget about Heinzie (horse) and Don Qui (donkey). I would enjoy reading more about these characters in another book.
    • 3/5
      I read this novel sporadically over a long period of time, and my motivation was mostly to finish it. However, I found it sweet and entertaining; it reminded me a lot of the pony books I used to devour when I was an equine-obsessed young girl. I never knew there were adult equivalents! As a murder mystery, it's OK, but I enjoyed the characters and the atmosphere more than the plot itself.
    • 4/5
      "The Cart Before the Corpse" by Carolyn McSparren is a new spin-off book of the Mossy Creek Hometown series. Having not read those books I was a bit afraid I'd find myself out of my depth before I even have a chance to get started. I was happily mistaken - you don't need to know one single thing about the series this spins off from to pick up the reins and start in on this new series.I love horses and reading about their handling and various competitions, equipage, grooming, and the like, but I'm not terribly knowledgeable about the proper terms...until now. This book doesn't assume that you come from the world of horse shows, driving and carriages but it also doesn't "talk down" to the reader to explain things. The explanations all fit in very well without breaking the flow of the story and I know a lot more now than I did about it all. For some reason I had a preconceived notion that the book would be in a bit more of a "primitive" setting. It wasn't that way at all - much to my delight - I like a good historical or "primitive" set book, but I generally prefer to not mix those with my mystery/investigative reading.Merry is a strong female character, if you like your female characters to be simpering "let the guy take the lead and sweep her off her feet and solve her problems" types, this is probably not the book for you. She's not so strong that she doesn't have emotions, break down, cry or freak out, but she handles what must be done first, then falls apart if she feels she needs to. She just wants to do the best she can in the face of her fathers death, to do right by what he was trying to accomplish near the end of his life, to find out who killed him, why he was killed, and somehow figure out what to do now that she can't ever truly reconcile with her father now that she's finally reached the point in life when she's ready to allow him back into her life.In addition to Merry, the other primary characters are well developed and at points during the novel get to tell things from their point of view. While primarily from Merry's viewpoint, you do occasionally get a glimpse of what others are doing - this can help advance the storyline while keeping Merry out of the loop of the ongoing police investigation and further "fleshing out" who these other characters are when they're away from Merry from their own standpoint. The sections are all clearly marked with who's point of view it's being told from, so there is little to no confusion about the sudden switches in locale and method of thinking about the investigation.I am definitely looking forward to more books in this new spin-off series (as well as picking up the previous Mossy Creek Hometown series), this book definitely has left me wanting to read more about Mossy Creek's inhabitants.Note only in my LT review: This would have indeed been much better had it been fully edited and not an unedited galley edition sent out for review. The grammatical, flow, and spacing mistakes pulled me from the story a number of times and I found myself having to do mental corrections to be able to continue reading. I understand that writers do not write 100% gold and that editors have to do a bit of cleanup before books are published - I'm not sure letting readers see the level of editing that needs to be done is such a good idea though - some people can get the wrong impression that the author "didn't care enough" to send in only a gold standard ready to publish yesterday formatted manuscript. I would also recommend to publishers/writers sending out early review and member giveaways in hopes of reviews - please send multiple formats or ar least one that can re-flow on an ebook reader if you're sending an ebook. My reader could not display the pdf very well at all so I had to read this entirely on my computer screen - not terribly convenient when I do have an ebook reader on hand that isn't a Kindle and doesn't handle PDFs as well as it could.
    • 4/5
      I don't read a lot of mystery but I'm so glad I got this one. I enjoyed the characters and the story line. The end was totally unexpected and awesome! This was a quick read, recommended for everyone.
    • 4/5
      This mystery takes place within the world of Carriage Driving; it focuses on horses, carriages, and of course, murder.I had some doubts about this book from the start; mainly because I got an e-book copy of it. I suppose I have this idea that an e-book isn't a "real book" and that if it were any good it would be a "real book" rather than an e-book....However, my doubts were quickly dispelled. This was a detailed, enjoyable mystery with convincing characters and an engaging plot.One of the problems I have with a lot of modern mysteries is that they wind up focusing more on the characters or the gimmick (in this case, the focus on carriage driving, a field I know close to nothing about) than the mystery. However, I found that wasn't a problem in this book. Although it does get deep into the nitty gritty of Carriage Driving, it doesn't do so to the loss of tension or mystery development. If there is one thing about this book that bothers me, it was that it does switch back and forth a fair amount between 3rd person and 1st. During the sections that focus on our protagonist, it's 1st, and when it's the detective investigating the mystery, it's 3rd. This is the second new mystery novel I read recently that did that, but I must admit it bothered me much more in the other novel I read... In this one, it wasn't actually that noticeable or bad. So really, I don't have much to complain about.This book gave me a new insight on both modern "gimmick" mysteries and e-books -- and made me excited about author Carolyn McSparren. I look forward to reading more of her work in the future... which is probably one of the highest compliments I can give an author.
    • 3/5
      I received an e-copy of this book through the Early Reviewer's Giveaway. This was a fast, fun read with an interesting mystery. The characters were entertaining and the scenes involving horses were very well developed - it was obvious that they lie close to the author's heart. Definitely a fun, relaxing, none-too-taxing rainy day read.
    • 2/5
      I think I may have enjoyed this a little more if it had been edited before being sent out for Early Reviewers. The missteps in scene/plot continuity and basic grammar frustrated me, taking me out of the narrative at every turn. Some of the characters seem like caricatures. The scenes featuring horses/carriages flow better than the rest. I thought that I could get through the book easily but I was gritting my teeth near the end.
    • 2/5
      This cozy mystery was easy to read and interesting enough though a person with knowledge of horses and the horsing world might enjoy it more. This book was neither good nor bad. A solid okay.
    • 3/5
      This is not a great work of fiction but I don't think it was meant to be; if you are looking for a fast uncomplicated read that will not tax you mentally this novel may be worthy of your bookshelf . I enjoyed this book; it had a nice small town atmosphere with some likable characters and a plot interesting enough to continue turning pages. I found this novel to be perfect for those times when life does not allow you to become overly involved, a book that can be picked up during spare moments and a storyline that can be easily followed. If you are expecting more from Cart before the Corpse you will be disappointed.
    • 2/5
      I have to say I wanted to like this book more than I really did, but that may not be the author's fault. As someone mentioned in a previous review, the editing of the book was very poor. I'm not certain why they didn't edit it more before they sent it out for review. There were some sections that were extremely disconcerting because characters suddenly spoke when they hadn't even been mentioned as being there. There were also numerous sentences where it was obvious that the author's intent changed midsentence but they were never clean up leaving it difficult to understand what the author was trying to say.As for the story itself, I was a little disappointed. When the author wrote about horses and carriage driving there was a realness and ease to her writing, but when she moved to the murder plot it felt very forced and pretty predictable. I had difficulty with the instant, extreme annimosity between Merry and agent Wheeler. The characters seemed more like stereotypes than fully developed characters.Overall, I think the bones of the story are good but I think it would definitely benefit from some more revisions and rewrites.
    • 3/5
      This wasn't a bad book at all. I will admit though that it took a little work to get into it as others have mentioned. I'm not a horse person, so the carriage details were a bit much for me. I could have done with less.Having said that, once things picked up, things got going with gusto. I liked all of the characters. Mossy Creek is quite the community. The Garden Club ladies pack quite a kick in their punch and don't mess with Don Qui.The ending wasn't quite what I expected, which is a good thing. I'm glad I didn't entirely figure everything out.
    • 4/5
      Overall, I rather liked this book. The narration jumped between first-person (Merry Abbot) and omniscient (all others) which made reading a bit jumpy at the beginning. But the plot was good and the characters were well rounded. I don't think I'll go back and try to read the original series this spun off from (Mossy Creek), but I probably will read the next Merry Abbot book when it comes out.
    • 4/5
      Quirky characters, both human and equine, a beautiful setting, and a well-crafted mystery make The Cart Before the Corpse a good read. The world of horse shows provides an interesting back drop without becoming tedious. I feel like I learned something while trying to solve the mystery before it was revealed. But I discovered the murderer right along with the detectives and then held my breath through the exciting ending. In the tradition of Janet Evanovich and Diane Mott Davison, the book focuses less on the violent murders and more on the sleuthing that leads to the solution, something I appreciate in a murder mystery. It's not great literature but I was entertained and am looking forward to a sequel.The book has a series of short chapters and moves between different character viewpoints. It helps to round out some of the characters rather than just showing everything from the main character's point of view. The author is clearly interested in developing her characters and setting rather than simply solving a mystery.I read a draft and was a little distracted by the typos and other errors but am assuming they will be fixed by the time the book is published.

    Book preview

    The Cart Before The Corpse - Carolyn McSparren

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