Shadow of the Raven
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- $12.99
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- $12.99
Publisher Description
Francisco Flynn is an officer in Land Management in the Mojave Desert, and he wouldn't have it any other way. The son of an Irish immigrant railroad man and a half-Mexican, half-Paiute mother, he lives in the caboose that his father brought up to a hilltop when the railroad stopped running there. Frank loves the desert and the animals that live there. He loathes the wealthy hunters who hire Indians to lead them to where they can shoot Bighorn rams and take their heads to hang as trophies on the walls of their fancy studies.
Over the years, Frank has come upon dead bodies---the remains of people who got lost and ran out of water, their corpses drying into mummies in the desert heat. But now he finds a dead man who has only recently lost his life, and it looks very much like he's been murdered. His shoes are gone, he's shirtless, and there is no canteen anywhere in sight.
A day or so later, Frank hears word of a trio of bikers who have blown into town looking for a missing comrade. They pick fights in the local bar and don't hesitate to kill when it suits them. Frank is certain that the dead man he found is connected to them, and that many people could be endangered, including the woman reporter he has learned to love. Frank will do anything to rid "his" desert of the bikers who are spreading danger and hate, including putting his own life on the line.
With Shadow of the Raven, David Sundstrand adds a shining new voice to Southwestern crime fiction.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Bureau of Land Management officer Frank Flynn goes looking for bighorn sheep, but finds the bloated corpse of a poacher, left to die without shoes or water, in Sundstrand's well-crafted debut set in the Mojave Desert. Frank teams with reporter Linda Reyes to investigate. Their search for the murderer parallels that of the victim's brothers Roy, Hickey and Jason Miller a trio of unrepentant, unwashed misfits whose detecting methods leave a trail of death and destruction. Roy and company mistake Flynn for an illegal guide and force him to lead them into the canyon to hunt down the wealthy trophy hunter likely responsible for their brother's demise, but these skillfully painted lowlifes wend their way to their inevitable and poetically just deserts. Sundstrand's rugged half Irish, half Native American protagonist as well as the unforgiving desert setting will appeal to fans of western mysteries like Nevada Barr's Anna Pigeon series and C.J. Box's Joe Picket novels.