"The author combines a Tom Clancy-like knowledge of ground-to-air missiles with a Robert Ludlum-like spy adventure to leave the reader awaiting the next Ike Schwartz." —Library Journal STARRED review

Nick Reynolds, his pilot's rating barely a month old, drops off the radar one night over the Chesapeake Bay. Investigating agencies call it another tragic pilot-error accident. No trace of the plane is found. But Charlie Garland,

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Ike Schwartz thought he could return to his hometown and ditch the demons that pursue him. More than anything, he wanted to blot out the pain and anger that came when his wife of less than a month was gunned down in a CIA foul-up. So he buried himself as sheriff in rural Picketsville, Virginia, a community indistinguishable from any of the hundreds of small towns that hang like beads on Interstate 81 running from Pennsylvania down to Georgia. Aside

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Elderly Jonathan Lydell III is proud of his family history and his house, which he is committed to restoring to its antebellum configuration, complete with a stranger room. Found in many family homes in the 1800s, an attached room with its own entrance, separately locked and kept for use by unknown travelers, it was intended to protect the family from unsavory guests. Nearly 150 years ago, an inexplicable murder took place in the locked stranger room...

"On the same evening that a body is found in Picketsville's urgent care clinic, a mysterious break-in occurs at the house of one of Callend University's faculty. Sheriff Ike Schwartz thinks both events might be connected to an icon, The Virgin of Tenderness, in the faculty member's possession. Is the victim somehow connected to the university? And why did he enter the country under an assumed name? Then, what appears to be outdated spycraft--a microdot--is...