Choker

By Frederick Ramsay

Nick Reynolds, his pilot’s rating barely a month old, drops off the radar at night over the Chesapeake Bay. Investigating agencies call it another tragic pilot error accident. No trace of the plane is found in the Bay’s murky waters. Ike Schwartz, erstwhile sheriff of Picketsville, on vacation, is approached by Charlie Garland, an old CIA friend, to look into the disappearance. The missing pilot was engaged to Charlie’s niece and the family is not dealing well with the lack of closure. More importantly, Nick, just before his disappearance, had placed a call to Charlie moments leading him to conclude something more than pilot error might be involved in the disappearance. Ike accepts the assignment as a favor to Charlie and also because vacations do not work for him. Ike’s wide-eyed entry into a simple missing person’s case catapults him into an international thriller á la Robert Ludlum with intimations of terrorism that might threaten the nation and its leaders. Clandestine operations, angry watermen, and out of place dredging spoil complicate Ike’s efforts to unravel the mystery.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Poisoned Pen Press
• Release date: May 27, 2010
• ISBN: 9781615951635

Frederick Ramsay

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.

Reviews for Choker

[cfk_3 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Ike, on vacation from his job as sheriff of Picketsville, VA, is drawn into a search for a missing young man. He and his small plane presumably went down on a foggy, moonless night along the coastal bay areas after leaving a cryptic message on his girl friend's phone.

[readinggeek451 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Ike Schwartz is a former CIA agent turned small-town sheriff. While on vacation, he gets a request from an old buddy to help track down a missing plane. Meanwhile, his deputies and the local preacher are faced with what appears to be Satanism.The missing plane plot is okay, but the Satanism plot is irritating. And the two halves of the book have nothing to do with each other. If they had meshed satisfyingly, I might have given this another half-star. As it is, I was generous.

[lesaholstine · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Once again, Ramsay surprises readers with his latest mystery. They are always complicated books, police procedurals with fascinating characters, beginning with Ike and Charlie. In fact, I'm beginning to be quite found of Charlie, a CIA PR man who is "spooky" even to those insiders at the CIA. Ike Schwartz continues to show strengths, a willingness to protect those he loves, including his country. Father Blake's role in this series grows larger, and minor characters, such as the Sutherlin family, beginning with the matriarch, have essential roles in the plots. Choker combines the best of police procedurals with a threat to national security, unfortunately, a believable threat. If you haven't yet discovered Frederick Ramsay's crime novels, you're missing some very special books.

[tututhefirst_1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

In this story, Ike, who is a retired CIA agent now serving as a small town sheriff in western Virginia, decides to take a real vacation staying in a house on the beach in Delaware. No sooner does he get settled in however, then he is tracked down by his old CIA buddy Charley and asked to go investigate the disappearance of Charley's niece's fiancè when the airplane he was flying disappeared off the radar over the Chesapeake Bay. Just before he lost contact, he had called his fiancee and told her to call her uncle. What did he see before he crashed? Ike reluctantly agrees to check into the "crash" and is soon sucked into an intricate plot, on the trail of what may be a terrorist plot against the US.In the meantime, back home, his deputy is dealing with a Satanic cult.................and it was here that Ramsay lost me. At first I thought this cult was going to get tied into the terrorist story, but if it did I missed it. The whole satanic thing was nothing but pure distraction. I wonder if the author felt he didn't have enough in the main plot to carry a full-length book? The main story was great and didn't need the side-bar that periodically popped up. I hope that none of the others in the series have these kinds of "extras."I enjoyed the main story, found it well-plotted, fast-paced and unfortunately, chillingly believable. Trying to figure out whether the plane crashed or was somehow "brought down", trying to figure out what the pilot was frantically calling about before he was lost, who was responsible and whether Ike would come out of this adventure alive, kept me reading all night. Even with the satanic diversion, it was good enough to have me looking for another in the series.