Buffalo Mountain (Ike Schwartz Series) - Hardcover

Ramsay, Frederick

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1590583698 ISBN 13: 9781590583692

Publisher: Poisoned Pen Press, 2007

Synopsis

It’s the bleak midwinter and the Shenandoah Valley is poised on the brink of an unusually icy and snowy season. Alexei Kamarov’s body is discovered in a forest within the Picketsville town limits. His driver’s license identifies him as Randall Harris. The last Sheriff Ike Schwartz heard of Kamarov, he was reported missing, presumed dead, in Russia, the victim of intelligence game-playing.
Ike is not happy with this piece of his past. Ike’s former CIA colleague and friend Charlie Garland asks Ike to keep a lid on the investigation.
Slowly, interagency rivalries surface as local petty criminals vie with international assassins and plotters for attention. All the while, Buffalo Mountain looms in the background. Does the community’s violent history have something do with this recent murder? Or is Kamarov’s death part of some greater political plot?

About this title

About the Author

Dr. Frederick Ramsay was born in Baltimore, Maryland. Upon graduating from Washington and Lee University in Virginia, he received his doctorate from the University of Illinois--Westside Medical Campus. After a stint in the Army, he joined the faculty of the University of Maryland, School of Medicine and also served as an Associate Dean. In 1971 he was ordained an Episcopal priest. He lives in Surprise, Arizona with his wife and partner, Susan. Buffalo Mountain is the third novel to feature Sheriff Ike Schwartz.www.frederickramsay.com

From Publishers Weekly

In this subpar third outing for Picketsville, Va., sheriff Ike Schwartz (after 2006's Secrets), deputy Whaite Billingsley finds a corpse bearing the ID of Randall Harris, a member of one of the meanest families in the backwoods locale of Buffalo Mountain. But Schwartz, a former CIA agent, immediately recognizes the body as that of ex-KGB spy Alexei Kamarov, and the mystery deepens when he contacts Charlie Garland, an ultrasecretive government figure, for help. Despite outwardly approaching the case as a routine and decidedly local homicide, Schwartz is too willing to tell his staff and friends about what is supposedly a top-secret black program operation. The layers of intrigue and duplicity are both difficult to follow and impossible to believe. Ramsay exerts considerable energy juggling his convoluted plot with a large number of marginally colorful ancillary characters, all while trying to convey a sense of place. But he has too many balls in the air, and the result is a rarely convincing or credible mystery. (Aug.)
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About this edition

• Publisher: Poisoned Pen Press
• Publication date: 2007
• ISBN 10: 1590583698
• ISBN 13: 9781590583692
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 257