"Its 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 drivers 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 this piece of his past has resurfaced. Especially...

On the night of the Fourth of July, Nick Reynolds, his pilot's rating barely a month old, disappears off the radar over the Chesapeake Bay. Investigating agencies call it a pilot-error accident, but no trace of the plane is ever found in the Bay's murky waters. Ike Schwartz, former spook and erstwhile sheriff of Picketsville, has his vacation interrupted when an old CIA buddy asks him to look into the disappearance. What looks like a simple missing...

Investigating the murder of a violent drug addict, Ike Schwartz works to track down the victim's missing daughter for important clues in a case that is complicated by a second murder, the input of former colleagues and his drawn-out engagement with Ruth.

When his cousin is killed while attending a family moonshine still, Jesse Sutherlin's investigation into the crime is hampered by his family, a girl who insists he get away before he gets killed, and the local sheriff, who arrests him for the murder.