Impulse

Mystery writer Meredith Smith gets more than he bargains for on a trip from his Arizona home to a school reunion in Baltimore. The 60-something Smith has to deal with past demons and present-day challenges. Narrator R.C. Bray gives equal attention to major and minor characters. He especially shines with the protagonist, who receives a kind, slightly scratchy voice. Ramsay's well-paced story treats senior citizens with dignity, and Bray pays attention to every detail along Smith's journey. As Smith tries to crack a case involving missing boys, Bray never misses a step in his array of voices--from that of a drunken, burned-out college alum to Smith's angry daughter. M.B. (c) AudioFile 2013, Portland, Maine

Starred review from April 17, 2006
At the start of Ramsey's superb, perfectly paced stand-alone, Phoenix mystery writer Frank Smith heads for his 50th prep school reunion—at Scott Academy, near Baltimore—anxious about all the attendant grudges, passions, jealousies and nostalgia. More seriously, Smith must contend with the suicide of his brother, Jack, 50 years earlier; the disappearance of four teenage schoolboys during the 1980s; and, back home in Arizona, the relatively recent murder of his wife, Sandy, a crime for which he's now the chief suspect. Ramsey (Artscape
and Secrets
) treats these traumas in a manner at once intriguing and believable yet somehow breezy and joyous. Seldom in crime fiction does one meet lead characters as likable as Smith and his long-lost friend/new love interest, Rosemary Mitchell. Both are "pushing seventy" but try to solve the various mysteries with the style, audacity and intelligence of a Sun City version of Nick and Nora Charles. Their senior viewpoint with commentary on various generations—"Greatest," Boomers, Xers—makes for a perspective that's at once tart, worldly and compassionate and that nicely balances the genuine evil in the air.