Rogue

July 15, 2011

A volatile small-town sheriff will stop at nothing to find the person responsible for putting his fiancé in a coma.

On a rainy October night in Washington, D.C., Ruth Harris wraps her car around a telephone pole and ends up in the hospital in intensive care, comatose and hooked to an IV. Keeping vigil at her bedside is fiancé Ike Schwartz, sheriff of nearby Picketsville, Va., and his CIA pal Charlie Garland. Ike's instincts tell him it wasn't an accident. But as a rural lawman, he gets no respect from city cops and has to do all the legwork himself. Charlie's influence gets Ike a look at the accident report, and he finagles his way into the yard where the car's being held to examine it. He quickly decides that his initial presumption of foul play was spot-on, and it's a short leap to the conclusion that Ike and not Ruth, who works for the Department of Education, was the real target. Unfortunately, it's election time in Picketsville, and Ike faces a formidable opponent in Jack Burns. So it falls to his politician father Abe to get him elected while he works the case. Like Ruth's recovery, Ike's progress is slow. Her temporary replacement, Dr. Scott Fiske, rubs Ruth's hard-working assistant Agnes the wrong way. When Charlie's investigations reveal that Scott Fiske doesn't exist, Ike's finally caught a break he can follow up on.

Suspense builds slowly in Ike's fifth procedural (Choker, 2008, etc.). Its low-key charm particularly rewards readers already familiar with the characters.

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July 1, 2011

In his seventh outing, Ike (Choker) isn't about to lose love again. He's going to find out who put his fiancee in a coma.

Copyright 2011 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

July 1, 2011
When his fianc'e is left comatose after a car accident in Washington, D.C., Sheriff Ike Schwartz of Picketsville, Virginia, is on the case. Calling on former CIA colleague Charlie Garland for help, Ike soon proves that what happened to Ruth Harris, president of Callend University, was no accident. But was the hit-and-run engineered because of Ruth's current work for the Department of Education on Title IX and textbook regulations, which was raising ire in some quarters, or was it directed at Ike, whose car Ruth was driving? Back in Picketsvillewhile Ike virtually ignores the pending election for sheriffsomeone is stealing hay, an unexpectedly valuable commodity, and murders start piling up. As suspicion extends even to Ruth's attentive mother, chic Eden Saint Clare, Ike finds once again that disparate cases are connected. The seventh Ike Schwartz outing (after Eye of the Virgin, 2010) combines high-tech detection with routine sleuthing to reach a surprising and satisfying conclusion.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2011, American Library Association.)

May 30, 2011
Ike Schwartz has clearly seen better days than those confronting him at the start of Ramsay's tepid seventh mystery featuring the CIA op turned smalltown Virginia sheriff (after 2010's The Eye of the Virgin). A suspicious car crash in Washington, D.C., has left Ike's college president fiancée, Ruth Harris, comatose, and Picketsville's mayor is openly trying to unseat him in the upcoming election. As a somewhat subdued Ike pursues an investigation into Ruth's "accident," for which he has no jurisdiction, with the aid of his old comrade in espionage, Charlie Garland, and the questionable assistance of sundry local yokels, oodles of talk and very little action ensue. By the time several subplots involving everything from Ruth's suspicious second-in-command to hay rustlers kick in and bodies start dropping, only devoted fans of this folksy series are likely to remain engaged.