Customer Reviews

Shadow of the Raven

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Francisco "Frank" Flynn is an officer with the Land Management. He's the son of an Irishman and a half-Mexican and half-Paiute Indian. His passion is the animal life of the Mohave Desert.

When he finds a man who has been recently murdered, he becomes suspicious. It's not unusual for someone to die in the desert, but this corpse has no shoes or canteen. Later, Frank learns that some bikers are searching for a missing friend. He believes the dead man is the biker the men are looking for.

Frank loathes the bikers and is determined to rid the desert of this human danger. He and reporter Linda Reyes look into the man's unusual death, and as a result, danger begins seeking them.

I love the character of Frank. His passion runs true and deep, his voice strong, his determination is fierce. The supporting characters are richly drawn and you love to hate the bad guys. The plot is delicious and you'll find yourself turning the pages and losing track of time.

Armchair Interviews says: Sundstrand's debut novel, Shadow of the Raven, is a winner.

How I wish that the BLM really had people like Frank on the job. Between the offroaders and people who dump their trash in the desert the BLM is very understaffed. Any way I enjoyed the book very much. Not like Tony Hillerman or Nevada Barr but fun and it kept me, reading way pass my bedtime. I am looking forward to the next "Frank" book.

On his off day, Bureau of Land Management officer Francisco "Frank" Flynn plans to spend time enjoying the bighorn sheep wandering the Mohave Desert; but to his chagrin for the third time in six months he has found a desiccated corpse whose eyes and nose were dessert for ravens. Frank assumes the dead man was probably a poacher or a sportsman. However, he finds it odd that the deceased has no boots or any footwear even as he calls it in to his superior at the BLM.

Frank is disgusted with the Inyo County Sheriff's Department who sent morons into the desert. He soon joins with local reporter Linda Reyes to investigate what happened to the victim with no shoes or evidence of a water container nearby. At the same time they look around beyond the sheriff's designated "crime scene" ring to other keys spots like a watering hole, three of the four Miller brothers (Roy, Hickey and Jason) look for their missing sibling Donnie. When Roy learns that Donnie is dead, assuming half-breed Frank is an impoverished illegal guide, he forces him to escort the threesome into a desert canyon so they can kill the hunter who he believes murdered his sibling.

SHADOW OF THE RAVEN is a fabulous whodunit starring Frank, a fabulous lead character who fits in so well in the rugged terrain; he makes the tale though the support cast at BLM, the sheriff's department, the reporter and the low life Millers enhance understanding of him and of the desert. Fans of Joe Picket will fully appreciate this descriptive suspense filled mystery.

Harriet Klausner

First Line: Finding another dead body ruined Frank Flynn's day off.

Frank Flynn is an officer of the Bureau of Land Management on the California side of the Mojave Desert. The son of an immigrant Irish railroad man and a half-Mexican, half-Paiute mother, he lives in the caboose that his father brought out to a remote area when the railroad stopped running there.

Although Frank loves teaching people about the desert, its beauty, and the wildlife that lives there, he could do without the thoughtless souls who tear up the fragile ecosystem with their campers and all-terrain vehicles. Moreover, if you really want to make him angry, bring up the topic of rich hunters who hire poverty-stricken Indians to lead them to protected Bighorn rams. The rams are then shot, and their heads taken to adorn the walls of some fancy den or study.

Frank is no stranger to finding human remains in the desert-- people who have gotten lost, run out of water, and died-- but this time the corpse he finds is different. This man has been murdered, left out in the merciless sun to die. Instead of convincing his colleagues of the man's murder, one of the tracks in the sand that Frank finds provides fodder for a running joke. A day or so later when Frank learns that three bikers are looking for a missing buddy, he's positive the dead man is connected to them.

Since the bikers are gaining a reputation for picking fights and maiming-- even killing-- when it suits them, the BLM agent knows that the chances of other people losing their lives is growing by the hour. Since the other law enforcement agencies aren't paying a bit of attention to him, Frank knows it's up to him to stop these men, and if he finds time to save his bighorn sheep, that will be icing on the cake.

I am no stranger to the Mojave Desert, although my treks have kept me to the Arizona side of this desert. It is a land of harsh and uncompromising beauty as long as you take the time to get out of your vehicle and walk a bit. Perhaps its saving grace is that, to most people, it looks so desolate that most of them never venture off the interstate. Since I have a particular fondness for crime fiction set in desert locales, I was happy when I ran across this book.

I'd barely begun to read when it became obvious that the author has a love of and an eye for the desert, too:

"Emptiness? Vast, uncluttered, rigorously frugal, but never empty. It was full of shapes and colors and the stillness of open places, a land of illusions, a place where cloud shadows moved across a dreamscape of empty lakes whose dry beds miraculously filled with water when the desert gods emptied the sky in dark torrents, washing the rocks and filling the canyons with ephemeral rivers of brown water."


Frank Flynn is a marvelously realized character in both his relationships to people and to the desert. Sundstrand also does an excellent job in depicting how the various law enforcement agencies-- police, the Department of Fish and Wildlife, and the Bureau of Land Management-- don't always agree on how things should be done... or even on who should do them.

For me, the villains and the plot proved to be a bit weak. The bad guys were just the sort of people I love to despise, but they really didn't rise above the two-dimensional. As for the plot, a few things were mentioned in passing that were all too easily guessed as having something to do with the denouement. Although the author switched around the timing of the two plot threads concerning the rich trophy hunter and the bikers, there really weren't any surprises in what happened.

In books where the characterization and setting aren't so rich and detailed, these weaknesses would make a huge difference. In the case of Shadow of the Raven, I can overlook them a bit as I look for the next book in the series. I most definitely want to read more of Frank Flynn and the Mojave Desert.