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The Ravenmocker
…DEATH IS BRANNAN ISSAC'S passion. That is why he's a Medical Examiner. His eccentricities are chalked up to his line of work but even so, most of the tenants in the run-down building where he lives are wary of him. Secretly, he is obsessed by skin rejuvenation products. Secretly, he has even been known to take a trophy home following an autopsy.
But Isaac is beyond eccentricity, as Sophia - the sickly teenage girl from his building who has a crush on him - is about to discover. When young children are abducted and the finger is pointed in his direction, Isaac cannot contain his shocking secret any longer…
But Isaac is beyond eccentricity, as Sophia - the sickly teenage girl from his building who has a crush on him - is about to discover. When young children are abducted and the finger is pointed in his direction, Isaac cannot contain his shocking secret any longer…
312 pages, Paperback
Published February 5, 2016
1 person is currently reading
62 people want to read
About the author
Peter Lancett
85 books11 followersAuthor, Editor and Film maker
Grew up in Stoke-on-Trent, England
Lived in London for 12 years
Lived in New Zealand for 6 years and later for 5 years
Currently living and working in England.
As a writer, I am the creator and author of the award winning Dark Man series of books, author of the novels Seeing Red, Gun Dog and Hanging in the Mist for the "Cutting Edge" series, published by Ransom Publishing (I was also the series editor), The Shadowmasters (Parts One and Two) and The Iron Maiden.
I also wrote and directed The Xlitherman, a feature film set in England, and have worked extensively for US-based producers on script and concept development for film and television, including the writing of pilot scripts for projects starring Ron Perlman (Sons of Anarchy, Beauty and the Beast, Hand of God), Oscar nominee Bruce Davidson, and Golden Globe nominee Lainie Kazan.
My latest work, in conjunction with co-author Teresa Schaeffer, is THE RAVENMOCKER, a disturbing novel of psychological horror, based on our feature film script of the same name.
January, 2016
Grew up in Stoke-on-Trent, England
Lived in London for 12 years
Lived in New Zealand for 6 years and later for 5 years
Currently living and working in England.
As a writer, I am the creator and author of the award winning Dark Man series of books, author of the novels Seeing Red, Gun Dog and Hanging in the Mist for the "Cutting Edge" series, published by Ransom Publishing (I was also the series editor), The Shadowmasters (Parts One and Two) and The Iron Maiden.
I also wrote and directed The Xlitherman, a feature film set in England, and have worked extensively for US-based producers on script and concept development for film and television, including the writing of pilot scripts for projects starring Ron Perlman (Sons of Anarchy, Beauty and the Beast, Hand of God), Oscar nominee Bruce Davidson, and Golden Globe nominee Lainie Kazan.
My latest work, in conjunction with co-author Teresa Schaeffer, is THE RAVENMOCKER, a disturbing novel of psychological horror, based on our feature film script of the same name.
January, 2016
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Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews
February 14, 2016
History, lore and the desire to always look young and perfect is the info structure that Brennan Issac medical examiner has in his life. A demented soul that has a deep seeded need to be perfect.
February 26, 2016
This book is a fab read, youth is what we all want. Who far will you go well written see full review on Amazon .com along with all the others that think this book is well worth the time
March 11, 2023
Ravenmocker
Not my usual genre! But I really enjoyed Ravenmocker. Suspense and a bit of horror. Good read, I found myself reading many chapters at a time.... Because I had to know what was next.
Not my usual genre! But I really enjoyed Ravenmocker. Suspense and a bit of horror. Good read, I found myself reading many chapters at a time.... Because I had to know what was next.
January 16, 2018
Seriously warped, and yet predictable.
October 24, 2022
Well written and very strange -- never read a novel like this -- it took you to another realm. I do recommend this book if you like the odd, strange and forbidden situations.
August 1, 2016
As I sometimes do, I set out looking for a new book, something I hadn't heard of and knew nothing about. I skimmed the descriptions for lots of books, read their first pages, and discarded many, but this made my shortlist. I think it was the confidence of the writing in the opening pages.
The book is generally well-written, good and strong. Professional springs to mind. There is a confidence to the prose and the description that really appealed to me. There's a conscious literariness to the prose, for example in the echoes of Poe. I'm not sure if that element worked for me but I can see why the Caw! Caw! was used as an aural motif. I found the missing commas before/after speech to be a bit distracting, but easily edited.
Story-wise I wasn't sure what to expect, since I like to work it out for myself. Ravenmocker is not an all-out horror, or an action story. That's not a problem. I'd say it is mostly a dark character piece with elements of mystery as to what is going on. It does that well. Interesting, disturbing, gruesome without being gratuitous. So, it's definitely a book worth reading.
The book is set in an apartment, a workplace, and the ground in between. This limits the things that can happen and the variety. Of course, you could argue that the focus is on the characters, and you'd be right. You could argue that the claustrophobia and repetition of location illustrates the lives. Again, you'd be right. Occasionally though I feel that we have to prioritise the reader over verisimilitude, and more variety of settings would have boosted the story. (Room for a whole debate there!).
I don't favour omnipotent narrators but the laconic one here is subtle enough to fade away in most cases; only a few times was the meta-commentary distracting (such as Sophia's first visit to Isaac's rooms - the narratorial explanation of every action and comment slows the pace and does the work for the reader - unnecessarily, since the writing is good enough not to need hand-holding). Likewise, I felt that the book could have been tightened slightly, possibly cutting down on some elements that are repeated, replacing those with more conflict. Particularly at the start of the novel, a number of chapters were slow-build additions of what went before, so it took quite a few before it started to pull me in. It really picked up at one point where the protagonist had police turn up at his door while a topless young woman was at his apartment - so much potential for drama and conflict here - more like this, or earlier in the novel. The build-up to the end was well done, and the finale delivers, so it is a shame that some of the excellent writing and dramatic conflict doesn't come sooner.
A few plot elements didn't convince me fully:
- Sophia has a rasping cough; it disappears once its plot device of meeting the doctor is served. Though the implication here could have been she was faking it.
- Can a pathologist like Isaac freely prescribe drugs such as antibiotics? That could just be my ignorance of medical professional procedure.
- I wasn't sure how Isaac could kidnap a child in daylight, undetected, on a park with watchful parents around.
- There is exciting urgency at the end of the novel, Isaac knows the police are coming, he must run ... then he switches to complicated procedures and a leisurely "special" bath (that would then require a second bath before could be seen in public), which weakens the sense of urgency.
- A girl screams at the end, people rush up to investigate - but conveniently seem to just leave her alone, so she also decides to look through paperwork, make plans, then have a leisurely "special" bath without anyone investigating...
Then again, all fiction requires some suspension of belief, so maybe I am at fault here.
To conclude: if you're interested in a measured character study from the perspective of obviously-disturbed fictional minds, with a nice undercurrent of unease, then you will definitely enjoy this. Slow burn gruesome horror where the undead are really the living: but with dead morals.
The book is generally well-written, good and strong. Professional springs to mind. There is a confidence to the prose and the description that really appealed to me. There's a conscious literariness to the prose, for example in the echoes of Poe. I'm not sure if that element worked for me but I can see why the Caw! Caw! was used as an aural motif. I found the missing commas before/after speech to be a bit distracting, but easily edited.
Story-wise I wasn't sure what to expect, since I like to work it out for myself. Ravenmocker is not an all-out horror, or an action story. That's not a problem. I'd say it is mostly a dark character piece with elements of mystery as to what is going on. It does that well. Interesting, disturbing, gruesome without being gratuitous. So, it's definitely a book worth reading.
The book is set in an apartment, a workplace, and the ground in between. This limits the things that can happen and the variety. Of course, you could argue that the focus is on the characters, and you'd be right. You could argue that the claustrophobia and repetition of location illustrates the lives. Again, you'd be right. Occasionally though I feel that we have to prioritise the reader over verisimilitude, and more variety of settings would have boosted the story. (Room for a whole debate there!).
I don't favour omnipotent narrators but the laconic one here is subtle enough to fade away in most cases; only a few times was the meta-commentary distracting (such as Sophia's first visit to Isaac's rooms - the narratorial explanation of every action and comment slows the pace and does the work for the reader - unnecessarily, since the writing is good enough not to need hand-holding). Likewise, I felt that the book could have been tightened slightly, possibly cutting down on some elements that are repeated, replacing those with more conflict. Particularly at the start of the novel, a number of chapters were slow-build additions of what went before, so it took quite a few before it started to pull me in. It really picked up at one point where the protagonist had police turn up at his door while a topless young woman was at his apartment - so much potential for drama and conflict here - more like this, or earlier in the novel. The build-up to the end was well done, and the finale delivers, so it is a shame that some of the excellent writing and dramatic conflict doesn't come sooner.
A few plot elements didn't convince me fully:
- Sophia has a rasping cough; it disappears once its plot device of meeting the doctor is served. Though the implication here could have been she was faking it.
- Can a pathologist like Isaac freely prescribe drugs such as antibiotics? That could just be my ignorance of medical professional procedure.
- I wasn't sure how Isaac could kidnap a child in daylight, undetected, on a park with watchful parents around.
- There is exciting urgency at the end of the novel, Isaac knows the police are coming, he must run ... then he switches to complicated procedures and a leisurely "special" bath (that would then require a second bath before could be seen in public), which weakens the sense of urgency.
- A girl screams at the end, people rush up to investigate - but conveniently seem to just leave her alone, so she also decides to look through paperwork, make plans, then have a leisurely "special" bath without anyone investigating...
Then again, all fiction requires some suspension of belief, so maybe I am at fault here.
To conclude: if you're interested in a measured character study from the perspective of obviously-disturbed fictional minds, with a nice undercurrent of unease, then you will definitely enjoy this. Slow burn gruesome horror where the undead are really the living: but with dead morals.
August 29, 2016
This is a great book. It's creepy and keeps a steady tension throughout the story. It's an uncomfortable feeling, reading and almost knowing what is going to happen but wishing you were wrong. Some of the characters were horrifying, yet I cared about what happened to them. That's some skilled writing. I would recommend this book to anyone who reads horror or psychological thrillers. Great stuff!
March 27, 2016
I loved this book from beginning to end it had me hooked. The dark side of youth and beauty. For ever young well worth the time to read
Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews