RAVEN

RAVEN

In 1943, a master German spy infiltrates a U.S. Navy base in Rhode Island with a mission to sabotage the war effort. As FBI and MI6 agents close in, the truth about his identity threatens to upend everything. A tense World War II espionage thriller with high stakes and hidden motives.

$9.06 – $27.28

About RAVEN

In mid-1943, at the behest of their Japanese allies, the Germans send their best agent, Johann Schmidt, code name “RAVEN”, to sabotage the U.S. Navy’s torpedo factory in Newport, Rhode Island. Cunning, intelligent, resourceful, and utterly ruthless, Schmidt arrives off the Rhode Island coast by German U-boat, seemingly undetected. The agent then succeeds in getting on to the Newport Navy Base and finds employment there. This aids Schmidt in discovering the location of the Navy’s bulk explosives storage site: Rose Island, located in the middle of the Eastern Passage of Narragansett Bay, one mile west of Newport. However, through cooperation between the British Intelligence Service MI6 and the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), and aided by a stroke of luck, RAVEN’s arrival is discovered. The FBI assigns one of their best counterespionage agents, Brian Weeple, to track down and capture and/or eliminate the saboteur. But Schmidt is not who everyone assumes him to be, significantly complicating the search. Will Schmidt’s secret identity be discovered, and can RAVEN be caught and stopped before the assignment is carried out?

What Readers Have To Say

New author, great story

“I approach this review of Mark Roddy’s newly released novel Raven from a unique perspective. Mark Roddy is my next-door neighbor and good friend of more than 20 years. I observed Mark up close as he wrote RAVEN. I have the utmost respect for Mark’s willingness to put himself into the public’s eye with a novel at 70+ years of age.

I thoroughly enjoyed RAVEN; it is a fast-moving story told in simple, somewhat spare, declarative sentences that move the narrative along at an engaging pace. It is also relatively free of the overly dramatic contrivances that are sometimes the stock in trade of spy thrillers. The closest he comes to one of these contrivances is his description of why the main character, Raven, becomes an Abwehr agent. But after that the story unfolds in a very believable albeit dramatic way.

Raven, the villain and main character, is the center of the story and Raven’s pursuers cover the entire spectrum of players from ordinary sailors to “boots on the ground” FBI agents. In fact, there is no central “good guy” but rather an ad hoc team of journeymen united in an effort to stop Raven from detonating a weapons storage facility in Newport, RI. To me, this lack of a hero is the most refreshing thing about RAVEN. In weaving this story of the team’s efforts Mark displays his in-depth knowledge of teamwork gained as an Air Force Colonel. The naval sequences in the book reflect Mark’s deep research and the advice of his son, Al, who is a Senior Chief Petty Officer in the US Navy. The descriptions of the Newport area are well researched and provide a very vivid picture of the geography that is central to the story.

The role of the caretaker of the Synagogue in Newport is a great aside in the book. The Synagogue is a fictionalized version of the historic old Touro Synagogue in Newport. It really provides clever juxtaposition to Raven, the Nazi spy and saboteur. It is also the key link in the chain of the thwarting of the disaster Raven had planned.

Finally, RAVEN concludes with a refreshingly brief but suspenseful ending followed by “The End”, thus avoiding the trap entirely too many authors fall into, namely, not knowing where “The End” is.”

- Ralph Parrott

Reviewed in the United States on December 10, 2022