Tomorrow is my last appearance with Fred Ramsay…
…but it’s definitely not the last time I’ll be handselling his books to you. His was a unique and delightful voice in crime fiction and he’s one of those authors whose work I never tire of recommending. He could write it all, and all of it well.
Fred died last year and I was honored to help finish his last book, Countdown. It is the sequel to Copper Kettle, where he introduced us to Jesse Sutherlin, the great-great of Essie, the deputy in his Ike Schwartz novels. Jesse survives the trenches of World War I to return home to Buffalo Mountain, only to find himself hip-deep in his family’s ancient enemies, the LeBruns, murder, and a burgeoning romance with Serena Barker, the one person on Buffalo Mountain who is smarter than he is and a LeBrun herself. A tale somewhere between the Hatfields and the McCoys and Romeo and Juliet.
In Countdown
It’s 1928, Jesse Sutherlin now has his own family and has made a success at the sawmill below Virginia’s Buffalo Mountain working for JG Edwards. The country’s economy is booming. And then David Privette, the sheriff who succeeded Dalton P. Franklin with whom Jesse had a run-in or two in Copper Kettle, arrives with surprising news – the body of Jesse’s father has just been discovered in the pit at Smith’s West Oxford Street ice house operation. How could this be? In 1918 a man had brought the family the news that Sutherlin, Sr., had died of the Spanish flu while seeking work up in Norfolk, Virginia.
Fred’s wife, Susan, will be joining us to celebrate the work and the man. I don’t know which I’m going to miss more. See you at the Poisoned Pen tomorrow at 2pm.
“Eight years after Copper Kettle we drop in on Jesse Sutherlin and his wife Serena, plagued by murders old and new beneath the advancing shadow of the Great Depression. Plot, characters, voice all still at that same gold standard Ramsay set from first book to this, his last.” –Dana Stabenow, bestselling author of the Kate Shugak Series
Book Review Monday Chatter Uncategorized Buffalo Mountain Copper Kettle Countdown Frederick Ramsay
I just came across your books recently, and have listened to all that have been available on our library’s service called Overdrive. Once I get into listening to an author’s works, I usually gout and the the unabridged CD version of the book, listen to it, and then donate it to the library for other patron’s to enjoy. You can imagine my disappointment in finding that your new Kate Shugak book is only available on Audible, which is a subscription service that I want no part of, Is it going to be available as an audio cd in the traditional format? I hope so.
By the way, both of my grandfathers, my day, my uncles all were salmon fishermen from Seattle who fished in the Bering Sea, as they called it.
The areas they fished were False Pass, Port Moller, and Dutch Harbor. I myself fished a few year with my uncle in Southeast Alaska, but never made it father north.
I’m delighted to hear that you’re enjoying the Kate Shugak novels so much, Michael, thank you! My mother was a deckhand on a fish tender and I lived on board with her. My father was a bush pilot who spent a lot of time beachcombing around Port Moller in his Super Cub. I still have a pile of Japanese glass floats from those expeditions. As for the audio edition of Kate21, so far as I understand it Tantor Media does only audio downloads, not CDs. That does seem to be the way the industry is trending, in particular because producing CDs is comparatively so expensive.