Stranger Room (Ike Schwartz Series, 4) - Hardcover

Ramsay, Frederick

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1590585356 ISBN 13: 9781590585351

Publisher: Poisoned Pen Press, 2008

Synopsis

"Ramsay skillfully weaves historical fact into his story, all the while blending brisk action with excellent characterization." ―Publishers Weekly

Elderly Jonathan Lydell III is proud of his lineage. He is related to the Virginia Lees and to the Custis family. For Lydell, family, status, and history are the only realities―that and his antebellum house.

Lydell's house has a very colorful history, and Lydell is committed to restoring it to its pre-Civil War configuration, complete with a "stranger room." In the 1800s, many family homes sported these attached rooms with separate entrances and locks that were kept ready for unknown travelers. The intent was to protect the family from unsavory guests.

Nearly 150 years ago, an inexplicable murder took place inside the Lydell's locked stranger room. The murderer was never caught. Lydell thinks this brutal history adds to the house's rich character. But when an identical murder is committed in the newly restored stranger room, even Sheriff Ike Schwartz and FBI agent Karl Hedrick can't explain it....

About this title

About the Author:

Frederick Ramsay was raised on the east coast and attended graduate school in Chicago. He was a writer of mysteries set in Virginia, (the Ike Schwartz Mysteries) Botswana Mystery series, Jerusalem Mystery series and stand-alones (Impulse, Judas: The Gospel of Betrayal). He was a retired Episcopal Priest, Academic, and author.

From Publishers Weekly:

Two locked-room murders, nearly 150 years apart, confound Sheriff Ike Schwartz of Picketsville, Va., in Ramsay's suspenseful fourth regional mystery (after 2007's Buffalo Mountain). Schwartz discovers that both crimes, with sinister undertones of Poe, occurred at the antebellum-era Lydell mansion. The estate's owner, Jonathan Lydell IV, is distraught to find his renovated stranger room (a guest room with its own outside entrance) soiled by death and the intrusion of law enforcement. While Schwartz and acting deputy Karl Hedrick (on loan from the FBI) contend with Lydell's condescension and racism, they're soon distracted by a growing meth epidemic, vandalism and even another death in Picketsville. Ramsay skillfully weaves historical fact into his story, all the while blending brisk action with excellent characterization. Schwartz has matured throughout the series, and readers will eagerly await his next adventure. (Aug.) ""
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About this edition

• Publisher: Poisoned Pen Press
• Publication date: 2008
• ISBN 10: 1590585356
• ISBN 13: 9781590585351
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 256