Buffalo Mountain (Ike Schwartz Mysteries (Paperback)) [Large Print] [Paperback]

Frederick Ramsay (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: August 15, 2007 | Series: Ike Schwartz Mysteries (Paperback)

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?

Editorial Reviews

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.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

From Booklist

The third Ike Schwartz mystery finds the Picketsville, Virginia, sheriff (and former CIA agent) in a bit of a quandary. A dead body that's appeared just inside the town limits looks like it belongs to Alexei Kamarov, a Russian spy who supposedly died several years ago. But the ID on the body identifies him as a member of the notorious Harris clan, who are well known for feudin' and fightin' with another family, the Sutphins (kind of like the Hatfields and McCoys). Ike decides to investigate both possibilities simultaneously, assigning his deputy, Whaite Billingsly, and his IT tech, the beautiful Sam Ryder, to follow the Harris lead. Meanwhile Ike hits up his former CIA colleagues for intel on the Kamarov connection. Ramsay demonstrates once again that he is a superb storyteller, adroitly mixing the spy and small-town mystery genres and shocking us with one walloping big surprise midway through the book. An excellent entry in this still-young but steadily improving series. David Pitt
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 404 pages
• Publisher: Poisoned Pen Press (August 15, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1590583701
• ISBN-13: 978-1590583708
• Product Dimensions: 8.9 x 6 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #6,918,488 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Dr. Frederick Ramsay was born in Baltimore. He is a graduate of Washington and Lee University and received his doctorate in Anatomy from the University of Illinois. After a stint in the Army, he joined the faculty of the University of Maryland, School of Medicine where he taught Gross and Micro Anatomy and Embryology. Collaborated and did independent research in the immunological system and its relation to cancer. He is the author of several scientific research and general technical articles.
During this time he also pursued studies in theology and in 1971 was ordained an Episcopal priest. After leaving the University, he served two congregations in the Baltimore area full time and several part-time.
He is now retired from full-time ministry and writes fiction.
His first novel, Artscape, was published by Poisoned Pen Press and launched July, 2004. His second, Secrets, (Poisoned Pen Press), was published in August of 2005 and Impulse, July 2006, was cited by Publishers Weekly as one of the one hundred best books 2006. He is the author of the Ike Schwartz mysteries, A series beginning with Predators set in Botswana, and a stand alone, religious historical fiction-Judas the Gospel of betrayal.
He is an iconographer, an accomplished public speaker and once hosted a television spot, Prognosis, on WMAR-TV, Baltimore. He currently lives in Surprise, Arizona with his wife and partner, Susan.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars fine Shenandoah Valley police procedural, August 14, 2007

By 

Harriet Klausner - See all my reviews
(#1 Hall OF FAME REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Buffalo Mountain: An Ike Schwartz Mystery (Ike Schwartz Mysteries (Hardcover)) (Hardcover)

Picketsville, Virginia Deputy Sheriff Whaite Billingsley finds a body on the nearby icy forests; the driver's license on the dead man was issued to Randal Harris. Since the victim is part of the orneriest bone cruel family living in the most isolated backwater area of Buffalo Mountain, Whaite assumes a feud of sorts.

However, when Whaite's supervisor sheriff Ike Schwartz sees the corpse, he knows the victim is not a Harris, but instead is missing former KGB spy Alexei Kamarov. Using his past contacts as a CIA Agent, Ike contacts government operative Charlie Garland while pursuing the case as a routine homicide starting with sending Whaite to do field inquires and directing Sam Ryder to conduct web searches.

In his third Shenandoah Valley police procedural ( see SECRETS and ARTSCAPE), Ike's behavior seems suspect as he knows better than to tell his subordinates that this whodunit is part of a blacks ops espionage encounter, but does so. The mystery is entertaining as Ike and his crew meets a cast of characters from generations living on the Buffalo Mountain, Russians who are out of place here (Brooklyn is more apropos), and CIA operatives trying to blend in. Although Ike's out of character behavior appears wrong as if he is bragging about war stories, fans of the series will enjoy the case of the former Soviet spy turned dead hillbilly family member.

Harriet Klausner

3.0 out of 5 stars Activity within the story, August 19, 2007

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Reader Views "Reviews, by readers, for readers" (Austin, Texas) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Buffalo Mountain: An Ike Schwartz Mystery (Ike Schwartz Mysteries (Hardcover)) (Hardcover)

Reviewed by Narissa Johnson for Reader Views (4/07)

"The body lay face up, halfway in the town's corporate limits, halfway in the state park." This is how Fredrick Ramsay's latest installment of his Ike Schwartz mystery series, "Buffalo Mountain" opens.

The questions surrounding this body discovered halfway between the jurisdiction of Ike Schwartz, the Sheriff of a small town in the Shenandoah Valley, and the state park begin to mount. Schwartz recognizing this body as Alexei Kamarov, a former Russian colleague from his CIA spy days, who Schwartz (and the CIA) assumed was killed years ago.

As members of Schwartz's investigative team attempt to track down the killer of this man, the CIA and FBI enter the picture - one group to request that the true identity of the Russian be hidden and the other launching their own covert investigation into the activities within the small town.

Ramsay's story introduces various characters which fill in the connection between this Russian and a neighboring town with its own closed societies built upon decades of family rivalries. While Schwartz contends with solving the mystery surrounding the dead man, the CIA, FBI and a neighboring town, he also becomes embroiled in the political pressures growing from within the town's women's college and his town's desire to move toward "growth."

What a shame so many interesting parts of a great mystery never really delivered. All the pieces were there: an interesting premise and a collection of characters with varying degrees of complexities and development. But in the end, when the different pieces of the story began to weave together the answers to all the questions the opening sentence prompts, we find a twist. Not the kind of twist that gathers a reader with momentum as they are hurtled toward a climax which answers the questions the reader has. Rather, the twist is how rather ordinary and coincidental all the activity within the story truly is; this time the climax does not live up to the promise of the opening line of "Buffalo Mountain."

Received book free of charge.