Drowning Barbie: An Ike Schwartz Mystery

The characters in Ramsay’s ninth mystery featuring Picketsville, Va., sheriff Ike Schwartz (after 2012’s Scone Island) make more of an impression than the crime solving. The discovery of the corpse of meth addict Ethyl Smut in a shallow grave atop another murder victim, who was buried 10 years earlier, puts Ike on the trail of Ethyl’s 17-year-old daughter, Darla, who suffered horrendous sexual exploitation starting at a young age to support her mother’s drug habit. Ike realizes that Darla is not so much a suspect in the crime as a threat to all the people who participated in her abuse. This crisis leads to much scurrying about by the mostly benign and amusingly quirky residents of Picketsville, as the wary Darla tries to hide from everyone. Readers should be prepared for coincidence and dangling plot threads in an installment that gets by on good-natured charm. (Feb.)