Free (iTunes DRM-free) Artscape by Frederick Ramsay [Police Procedural Heist Caper]

[ATDrake]

Artscape by Frederick Ramsay is the 1st in his Ike Schwartz series of police procedurals starring an ex-CIA agent turned college town sheriff, free courtesy of publisher Poisoned Pen Press, who are offering tie-in discounts on other books by the author.

I read this early this year when it was one of PPP's 99 cent introductory specials and it was okay, with some promising moments. I'd be willing to spend the small amount asked for the sequels and maybe another of Ramsey's other series, which to be honest, sound a lot more interesting.

Currently free without DRM @ iTunes (available to Canadians).

The 2nd book in the series is discounted in most venues to $2.99, and further books in this and Ramsay's other series are down to $4.99 ($6.99 regularly), and you can get them cheapest (and DRM-free ePub) for prices ranging from $1.74-$3.40 each via Books on Board as long as their 40-50% off backlist sale continues.

Here's PPP's author page for Ramsay with the series order numbering and buy-links to the major stores.

Description
Ike Schwartz thought he could return to his hometown and ditch the demons that pursue him. More than anything, he wanted to blot out the pain and anger that came when his wife of less than a month was gunned down in a CIA foul-up. So he buried himself as sheriff in rural Picketsville, Virginia, a community indistinguishable from any of the hundreds of small towns that hang like beads on Interstate 81 running from Pennsylvania down to Georgia.

Aside from its Civil War history, Picketsville’s only real claim to fame is Callend College, a private women’s school located just within its corporate limits. The college is notable, in turn, for housing one half of the billion dollar Dillon art collection, carefully secured in an underground bunker originally built in the late 1950s as a super bomb shelter.

It’s bad news for both Dr. Ruth Harris, the newly hired president of the college, and for a shadowy group whose services have been contracted by Middle Eastern fanatics—The New Jihad—when the collection is scheduled to be removed to New York. The plan is to steal the half billion dollars worth of fine art and statuary, and ransom it back for millions.

With the closure of the facility imminent, the operation must be moved forward, which, in turn, creates unanticipated risks and problems. And everyone dismisses Ike Schwartz as a stereotypical rural sheriff. He is, however, a man with uncommon skills, a tough hide, and a notable past—all of which make an arresting first novel.

[koland]

Darn ... one of the ones I bought during the sale.

First publishers taught me not to buy books at full price; then, not before dropping below $10, then $2.99, now 99 cents to 1.99. PPP wants me to wait until they are free (as do a few others, it seems).

Next thing you know, they'll have me trained to just use the library.

[ozron]

Lol... What's a library?

[ATDrake]

It's that place that has free books which isn't Amazon or B&N. You don't even need an e-reader to use it!

To be fair, PPP's been pricing theirs very reasonably, what with the 99 cent deep-discount introductory promos (which I kind of miss because there was greater selection and more variety, not to mention stuff I haven't already read), and now the freebie + next one is $2.99 + more for $4.99 tiered promos which make it very affordable to try-then-buy a series.

They've gotten quite a bit of my money over the past couple of months and hopefully this encourages them to offer more.

[koland]

I think this title has two editions on Kindle (one of today's did, the other did not) - the other with a different publisher name (that looks like a CreateSpace clone, from what I can tell) and it's $9.99.

[ATDrake]

A lot of PPP books used to come out through this imprint called ReadHowYouWant (or name to that effect; I can't be bothered to look it up), which was the old e-publishing service they used to outsource to.

That was apparently before they started doing their own e-books and selling them via the GereDonovan Press shopping cart they used to do on their website sometime last year (I remember looking up the Beverle Grave Myers books in e-book format not that long ago so I could recommend them to some random person on the internet who wanted Venice-set opera stuff, IIRC and there were only the other editions available).

[koland]

I remembered there was some connection -- they need to clean up all those old listings, though. The pricing is very high for backlist (for almost all authors) and probably doesn't help their sales.