Shadow of the Raven

With Shadow of the Raven, David Sundstrand adds a shining new voice to Southwestern crime fiction.

Francisco Flynn is an officer in Land Management in the Mojave Desert, and he wouldn’t have it any other way. The son of an Irish immigrant railroad man and a half-Mexican, half-Paiute mother, he lives in the caboose that his father brought up to a hilltop when the railroad stopped running there. Frank loves the desert and the animals that live there. He loathes the wealthy hunters who hire Indians to lead them to where they can shoot Bighorn rams and take their heads to hang as trophies on the walls of their fancy studies.

Over the years, Frank has come upon dead bodies---the remains of people who got lost and ran out of water, their corpses drying into mummies in the desert heat. But now he finds a dead man who has only recently lost his life, and it looks very much like he’s been murdered. His shoes are gone, he’s shirtless, and there is no canteen anywhere in sight.

A day or so later, Frank hears word of a trio of bikers who have blown into town looking for a missing comrade. They pick fights in the local bar and don’t hesitate to kill when it suits them. Frank is certain that the dead man he found is connected to them, and that many people could be endangered, including the woman reporter he has learned to love. Frank will do anything to rid his desert of the bikers who are spreading danger and hate, including putting his own life on the line.

David Sundstrand was a longshoreman, a soldier, and a railroad brakeman, and served in the merchant marine before going to college on the G. I. Bill to study English literature. He liked being a student almost as much as being a ne’er-do-well and might have stayed in college permanently were it not for the constraints of having to make a living. After many years of teaching English in high school and college, he decided to change hats and write something himself. He lives in Reno, Nevada, with his wife, Jacquelyn, two dogs, and a cat.