The Raven Conspiracy

De: Michael F. Spratt

Narrado por: Andrew Bladwin

An FBI team arrives March 6, 2020, in a small Florida surfing village to investigate a series of terrorist attacks. The Bureau has a hot lead on a woman with a violent past and instructions to work with the local deputy, JP Barnett.

Barnett's overly relaxed and incompetent techniques are instantly at odds with the federal agents. While the team awaits the terrorist specialty group from FBI headquarters, the local deputy seems to be doing his best to divert the investigation.

With leads up and down the Atlantic coast, the federal investigators are bewildered by the quirky locals and everyone's party-at-the-beach attitude. Even after demanding a meeting and support from the county sheriff, the three-person FBI team cannot seem to get serious professional help.

Why do the people on this beach trust a goofball deputy and his pair of dogs more than trained experts? Can the FBI get the strange residents out of the way and solve the case before the next attack leads to dozens of deaths? And should JP Barnett be ignored or arrested?

©2021 Michael F. Spratt (P)2022 Michael F. Spratt

The Mystery Is Lesser Than The Character Sketches

For a comic audiobook, the narrator Andrew Bladwin did an effective job with most voices, though a couple of the female voices were inconsistent between parts. As for the story, if you have liberal sensibilities, you really are not going to enjoy the protagonist at all. The author tries to humorously deny it by acknowledgement, but this deputy is racist, sexist, and a thoroughly stereotypical Floridian (in a bad way). The FBI as a group are incompetent, inept, but are quite right about the deputy's problems.

The main mystery is deeply unsatisfying and could have been a short story. The various vignettes are good and a couple of the sideplots could have made for a better story.

I would not recommend this book if you are looking for a good mystery or an organized narrative. I would cautiously recommend this if you want positive reinforcement for Florida's negative stereotypes. I would recommend it for a comic read if you can look past the horror of having these people actually be in real life.

Don’t read, there’s very little here.

The premise of the story was solid. Mysterious crimes occurring in a sleepy Florida town; by the book FBI Agents and a relaxed deputy have to partner to solve the crimes. That’s more or less where the good parts of the book end.

There actual mystery receives little attention. The deputy is able to derail any meaningful work by the FBI Agents by stalling them at his favorite restaurant. Each time they eat there they fixate on how the food is better than anything anyone had before. There is more detail spent on the flavors and perfection of each meal than the crimes committee. While both the readers and Agents are distracted by the authors fixation on food, various townspeople follow the deputies his hunches to solve the crime.

The author spends more time focusing on the race and dress/attractiveness of characters than their contribution to the case itself. He had a weird fixation with a “beautiful innocent doe” of a girl who was blinded by the criminal. The FBI agent that receives the most attention is a young girl of Japanese descent, who is not surprisingly a math whiz that wants to fit in and isn’t interested in small talk. Because she is a love interest of the protagonist, she’s portrayed as the only FBI agents who isn’t completely inept. The other two are more focused on arresting locals for small crimes than they are at solving the crime itself.

This book appears to be a reflection of:
* the authors disdain of government
* the authors love of food
* the authors love of all things classic rock

If you don’t like the word woke and like a light mystery that focuses on culinary references and cultural references and narratives commonplace in the 80s this book is for you.