Ravens [Hardcover]

George Dawes Green (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: July 15, 2009

The Boatwrights just won 318 million dollars in the Georgia State lottery. It's going to be the worst day of their lives.

When Shaw McBride and Romeo Zderko pull up at a convenience store off I-95 in Georgia, their only thought is to fix a leaky tire and be on their way again to Florida-away from their dull Ohio tech-support jobs. But this happens to be the store from which a 318,000,000 million dollar Jackpot ticket has just been sold -- and when a pretty clerk accidentally reveals to Shaw the identity of the winning family, he hatches a ferociously audacious scheme: He and Romeo will squeeze the family for half their prize.

That night, he visits the Boatwright home and takes the family hostage, while Romeo patrols the streets nearby, prepared to murder the Boatwrights' loved ones at any sign of resistance. At first, the family offers none. But Shaw's plot depends on maintaining constant fear-merciless, unfaltering terror-and soon, under the pressure, everyone's sanity begins to unravel . . .

At once frightening, comic, and suspenseful, RAVENS is a wholly original and utterly compelling novel from one of our most talented writers.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Starred Review. Soon after Mitch and Patsy Boatwright, two down-home one-step-above-poor-white Georgians, win the $318 million Max-a-Million jackpot in this stellar thriller from bestseller Green (The Juror), they receive two unwelcome visitors—Shaw McBride and Romeo Zderko, who are fleeing nowhere techie jobs in Ohio for a never-never Florida dream. Shaw, the brains, and Romeo, his half-unwilling brawny pawn, threaten to kill the Boatwrights' loved ones unless the couple agree to hand over half their winnings. Through rapidly shifting points of view, especially the clear eyes of daughter Tara Boatwright, a community college student, Green frighteningly and unequivocally shows how victims can come to adore their tormentors, amid a mix of madness, fear, isolation, greed and delusions of power and glory. This exquisite novel of psychological suspense builds to a devastating resolution that will leave readers with the cold shudders for a long time afterward. (July)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist

Shaw and Romeo, friends from grade school to their present-day labors in dead-end tech-support jobs, are headed for a Florida vacation. In a Georgia convenience store, Shaw learns from a clerk that a local family purchased a lottery ticket worth $318 million, and he hatches a plan to get half of it. His plan is simple: Shaw takes the family “hostage” by telling them that Romeo is driving around their small city, ready to murder their loved ones if they don’t support the ruse that Shaw is due half the winnings. As news of the family’s big win spreads, crowds throng around the house, and the terror inside it grows. Green, the author of the acclaimed The Caveman’s Valentine (2000), is skilled at psychological suspense. More than half a dozen major characters are fully developed, and their evolving reactions to their situations and to other characters are sure to engage readers who like to feel the narrative screws tightening. --Thomas Gaughan

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 336 pages
• Publisher: Grand Central Publishing; 1 edition (July 15, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0446538965
• ISBN-13: 978-0446538961
• Product Dimensions: 6.2 x 1.2 x 9.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (59 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,009,764 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

26 of 26 people found the following review helpful

3.0 out of 5 stars Who Gets the Payoff? October 4, 2009

By Eric Wilson TOP 500 REVIEWER

Format:Hardcover

"Ravens" offers a stark cover, an ominous title, and an interesting premise--all of this bolstered by sterling words from Publishers Weekly and respected authors. I'd never read a book by this writer before, but I was drawn in quickly by the moody prose that is reminiscent of Joe Hill's "Heart Shaped Box," both in tone and characterization.

Shaw and Romeo are two drifters, friends from way back, who happen upon a chance of a lifetime when they get the inside scoop on a family who's recently won a monster lottery jackpot. They swoop in, raven-like, to claim half by coercing the unsuspecting family through threats against their immediate loved ones. I settled in for psychological suspense and tense pacing, only to find myself slipping into disbelief. How could these bumbling criminals pull this off? How could this family fail to make any intelligent efforts to free themselves? Yes, there's a whole messiah-like complex that begins to evolve around Shaw, but even that is built on a stereotype of Bible Belt religious wackos that tries to be Jim Jones like in one scene and devil-may-care in the next.

The characters are deftly drawn, the dialogue superlative, and the settings rich in detail. However, the endorsers' warnings of "cold shudders" and a "devastating" conclusion all failed to pan out, and in the end I wondered who was supposed to get the payoff here? How could an editor fail to help such a talented author turn these puzzle pieces into a truly thrilling, truly moving story. I, for one, was left feeling cheated.

12 of 14 people found the following review helpful

2.0 out of 5 stars A Disappointing Effort from a Talented Author September 18, 2009

By Thriller Lover VINE™ VOICE

Format:Hardcover

RAVENS is George Dawes Green's first novel in fourteen years, and it qualifies a moderate disappointment. While the book has some strong points, it contains some severe flaws that hampered my enjoyment of it.

The storyline of RAVENS is pretty simple. A working class Southern family hits the lottery, and a pair of would-be criminals demand half their winnings. If the family doesn't meet their demands, the criminals threaten to kill them and others close to them.

Not a bad idea for a suspense thriller, but Green doesn't spend enough time fleshing out his plotline. Events occur in a forced manner without much build-up or explanation. The result is a rather sketchy tale that I ultimately found unbelievable and half-baked.

On the plus side, RAVENS does contain two very well developed characters, most notably the reluctant criminal Romeo Zderko and the lovelorn cop Burris. The scenes involving these two men are very enjoyable to read -- they are both fully defined characters whom I found quite compelling.

But there are about ten other key characters in this novel who are not nearly as well fleshed out. Many of them are portrayed as little more than white trash stereotypes -- unlikable and borderline stupid. Unfortunately, these characters dominate a big part of RAVENS, which make large sections of the novel quite expasperating to read.

Ultimately I think you can do better than this book. If you want to read a gritty crime novel about greed and hoplessness in a small town setting, my advice is to instead read A SIMPLE PLAN by Scott Smith or THE ICE HARVEST by Scott Phillips. They are far better plotted and have better fleshed out characters than what I found in RAVENS.

6 of 7 people found the following review helpful

2.0 out of 5 stars Good Start, Bad Ending April 21, 2010

By Robert Brumm

Format:Hardcover

Ravens kept me turning pages and then spoiled it with the incredibly lame ending.

*SPOILER ALERT*

The thing that bothered me the most about the ending is Burris offering to help Romeo kill himself by telling him to go for the gun on the floor so he could riddle him with 4 bullets. WHAT?!?!

By now it's clear he is an average cop at best but do you mean to tell me he's going to kill Romeo in cold blood in front of two witnesses? Why would he do that? One of those witnesses was the woman who he's loved for 40 years who doesn't even know at this point that Shaw and Romeo were bad guys. Gimme a break. Romeo posed no danger at this point, plus now that Shaw is dead he would be the number one witness besides the family to back up Burris' case and save him from getting fired.

I couldn't see Tara shooting Shaw either.

My ending would have went something like this:

Tara points the gun at Shaw but doesn't have the nerve to pull the trigger. Shaw, enraged that she would even consider it, attacks her and smacks her around in a fit of rage. Nell rushes to save Tara, Shaw struggles with Nell, and shoots her in the arm or something just as Burris busts in. He sees Shaw shoot the woman he loves, Shaw points his gun at Burris, and Burris fills him full of lead.

Romeo begs Burris to shoot him too, but since he poses no threat, Burris cuffs and arrests him just as more cops swarm to the house. Nell sees Burris as a hero and maybe falls for him at this point, who knows. He gets promoted to Sergeant, the family get's all the dough, Tara doesn't have to kill anybody etc.

Actually, now that I think about it I'm sick of the standard ending of movies and books where the bad guys always have to die at the end. It's such a cop out. I don't think either of these two clowns did anything bad enough to warrant a death sentence. Throughout the book I never got to the point where I couldn't wait for them to get their asses kicked or killed. I think it would have suited the story better to have them both go to jail instead of get killed.

One more thing that bugged me about the entire book was the way all the characters? They talked in questions? Most of them did that? For one character that would be ok because I suppose some people talk like that but not everybody!