SAM RAVEN

Sam Raven is a hostage rescue expert.

He had been a CIA operative for a good number of years prior to switching to this new role, hence his membership in this compendium, and he has found in his current occupation that some of the people he goes up against are of the ilk as those he fought while with the Agency.

He is a freelance operative in that he does not work for any particular organization nor in any particular area of the world. His reputation allows his name to be passed by word of mouth as someone who usually got the job done right. In the years he has been doing this line of work, he has had some failures as would be expected but he has racked up far more wins.

Rescuing captive people has become an obsession with him. "Raven renewed his vow to make sure he helped as many victims survive as possible. If they didn't, he'd avenge them." The devotion to his work that he possesses comes because "he lived a dichotomy. He could save others, but he hadn't been able to save those closest to him. His crusade against predators in all forms was his way at atonement. The massive debt was too large to ever repay. He'd be fighting till the end."

That self-imposed debt dates from a few years back when he was a member of a 5-person team of CIA operatives working in Afghanistan fighting the Taliban and Al-Qaeda. One mission went horribly wrong and the team found itself captured and imprisoned in a cave in the mountains, barely surviving while "he and Vic and Billy and Carlos had been tortured, and Mara raped".

The Mara Cole in this instance was a fellow agent that Raven was especially close to. At least until the capture and the horrific abuse she endured. The trauma caused the team to disband after their escape and go their separate ways, none of them remaining with the Agency. The loss of that relationship with her played extra hard on his mind.

So now Raven fights his demons of guilt from that failed mission and what happened to him and his team by trying to keep such horrible things happening to other people. He no longer works for the CIA per se, though he has done a few jobs for them on a straight one-time contract basis. Still he does know who to call back at Langley if the need arises, if he can remember the right passcode.

I knew from the moment I learned the author, Brian Drake, had a new series out, I would enjoy it. That was not a guess, of course, because the man had already penned two series in the compendium, both of which I like a whole lot and eagerly awaited more adventures about.

It turns out I had to wait a while because he was coming up with Sam Raven. It was worth the wait.

Raven is, like a lot of us, a flawed person. His flaw comes from his deep belief he is ultimately guilty of getting his teammates kill or tortured. I don't see it that way but he does.

That flaw with its resultant demand to keep helping people held hostage drives the stories so I am kind of torn - do I want him to get over it or not? Luckily that is up to Brian Drake, not me.