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22 of 22 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Who Gets the Payoff?, October 4, 2009
"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.
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10 of 12 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
A Disappointing Effort from a Talented Author, September 18, 2009
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.
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5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
Good Start, Bad Ending, April 21, 2010
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!
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