I love Reverend Blake Fisher! I know. That's not what you expect to read in a review for an Ike Schwartz Mystery. I'm supposed to love Ike, and I do, but not like I love Father Blake. He is a good man and true; to himself, to his congregation, not least of all to his God, and as such cannot be false to any man. He is dedicated and eloquent and I always learn something from him. This time it was the difference between the Second Amendment to the US Constitution and the separation of church and state.

In an interview for MyShelf in 2007, Dr. Ramsay told me that his books "are about Picketsville, its people, and how they interact." With Choker we get to watch Ike and Father Blake engaged on two different fronts in the battle against evil. Ike is trying to prevent a disaster equal to "the fate of the world hanging in the balance" and Father Blake is trying to prevent irreparable damage to young Satanist wannabes. It is the juxtaposition of the two scenarios that gives this work depth. Ike, under protest, pulls together the clandestine CIA operation in Chesapeake Bay while Father Blake, confident and sure, lays out the case for the Picketsville Sheriff's department to raid a teen hangout. Ike has limitless funds and various government agencies to draw from. Father Blake has the three Picketsville deputies. Ike has to be cajoled into his role but relents despite his opinion of The Company. Father Blake is the keystone to the unpopular hometown operation, risking censure and unemployment to expose the teens' illegal activities.

The Picketsville plot gives the Chesapeake Bay plot a more viable context by comparing a personalized peril to a threat from external forces in order to define the paradigm of evil. Which is more portentous:  an unseen harbinger ravaging lives one at a time or the menace of flesh-and-blood fiends destroying innocents on a massive scale? I know what Reverend Fisher would say. And Sheriff Schwartz will do whatever needs to be done.