Secrets
“It’s Mitford with murder”

Waldo Templeton was, at best, a mediocre organist. He was also careless, so his killer was able to follow him to the sanctuary of Stonewall Jackson Memorial Church in Picketsville, VA, and dispatch him. Then the Vicar’s secretary follows Waldo to an early grave.
The Vicar, the Reverend Blake Fisher, sent to Picketsville when his ambition overcame his common sense, had had enough trouble in Philadelphia. He did not need a corpse behind his altar. He did not need his gun to be stolen, and he definitely did not need the local police breathing down his back as a suspect in a double murder.

Aided by the computer wizardry of his newest deputy, Sam (Samantha) Ryder and the country wisdom of Billy Sutherlin, Sheriff Ike Schwartz must sort through false leads, the unsolicited helpfulness of a politically connected parishioner and missing counseling files belonging to Blake’s predecessor. Then the Vicar himself becomes the killer’s third target.

Secrets is a marvelously plotted traditional mystery, set in the hamlet of Picketsville, Virginia and populated with vivid characters you grow to care about in the course of this tightly written novel.
– Julia Spencer-Fleming

With regional police procedurals like this one, Frederick Ramsay will not remain a secret to readers.
– Harriet Klausner

Secrets is the sequel to Ramsay’s first novel, Artscape, featuring Sheriff Ike Schwartz.