The Raven by Mike Nappa

As part of his regular street performance, a deception specialist who goes by the name The Raven picks his audience's pockets while they watch. It's harmless fun--until he decides to keep the spare wallet a city councilman doesn't seem to miss, hoping for a few extra bucks. When he finds not money but compromising photos of the councilman and his "personal assistants," The Raven hatches a plan to blackmail the man. However, he quickly finds himself in over his head with the Ukrainian Mafia and mired in a life-threatening plot code-named, "Nevermore." 

Private investigators Trudi Coffey and Samuel Hill must scramble to sort out the clues--and their complicated feelings for each other--to rescue The Raven and save hundreds of lives from a wildcard bent on revenge. 

Mike Nappa snags readers from the first page of this fast-paced thriller--and he never lets go until the end.


My review:

   This is book #2 in the Coffey & Hill Series. I don't know how many books there will be in the series, but each one is going to have the title of one of Edgar Allen Poe's works, and that work will play into the story in some way. I am not an Edgar Allen Poe fan, but I really enjoyed the first novel in the series, Annabel Lee, and liked this one even more.

  The first book was very violent and the review offer even had a warning about that. This book was just as exciting and suspenseful, but wasn't nearly as violent.

 The Raven has elements of suspense, drama, mafia, dirty political dealings, revenge, and more. Nappa brought back the two characters from his first novel, Trudi Coffee and Samuel Hill - divorced from each other, but running a detective agency together. The chemistry between the two of them make a great addition to the story.

 And then there is The Raven..... a young guy of 23 who has gotten himself into very hot water, but you can't help but like the guy even though he is a petty thief who only has himself to blame.

  The plot is very well done, and complicated enough that I was both impressed and not sure what was going on at times.

 I like how Nappa did the book. It starts out with a very climatic moment, then goes back 4 weeks prior and builds up to that moment. Each chapter has the location, day, time, and how much time there is until the big event. It also has the name of the person that chapter is going to focus on, which is a great idea since The Raven's parts are always in first person, but everyone else is in third person.

 This is a book that I read in one weekend and had a hard time putting down. It had a great ending that wasn't at all what I had expected from the beginning of the book, and through all of the suspense and intrigue was the message of salvation, that it is never too late to find your way to God, and that no one is beyond redemption.

  Well done, Mr. Nappa. You should be very proud of this one.

I was given a copy of this book in exchange for my honest review.

About the author:

Mike Nappa is an entertainment journalist at FamilyFans.com, as well as a bestselling and award-winning author with more than one million books sold worldwide. When he was a kid, the stories of Edgar Allan Poe scared him silly. Today he owns everything Poe ever wrote. A former fiction acquisitions editor, Mike earned his MA in English literature and now writes full time.



The Raven is available from Revell Publishing, part of the Baker Publishing Group.