Protagonist Eric Ridge has a specific set of skills. A combat veteran turned civil litigator, he barely survives being bashed over the head and dropped into the Los Angeles marina. His attacker told him to drop the case. But if they think they can scare him off with threats, they don’t know him. He’d never abandon his clients.
So there’s only one thing left to do: figure out what case his assailant was shouting about?
With the help of his team—including his best friend and his computer-whiz wife—Ridge discovers the existence of the Raven Society, a shadowy cabal that coerces and kills judges in order to control the judiciary and anyone who gets in their way.
Will Ridge and his team survive to use the evidence they’ve developed? Or will they suffer the same fate as others who have dared to confront The Raven Society?
When writing Conspiracy Ignited, author Raymond Paul Johnson was inspired by ThrillerMaster Michael Connelly, especially The Scarecrow and The Lincoln Lawyer. “I’ve read thrillers all my life, love what I consider to be realistic ones (like Michael Connelly’s Lincoln Lawyer series and Clive Cussler’s Dirk Pitt adventures) and longed to write one myself. This was my first.”
However, he also saw an opportunity. “I saw three empty spaces in crime lit that I wanted to fill.”
Two of those spaces are filled by Ridge via his roles as a former paramilitary CIA combat pilot and his current job as a civil-law trial attorney. Through his protagonist, Johnson also wanted to show readers what military combat veterans go through both during and after war.
“The third empty space was antagonists trying to take control of America by terrorizing the third branch of our government—the judiciary—as opposed to the executive branch (e.g., by kidnapping the President or a member of his/her Cabinet) or a Senator or other Congressional member from the legislative branch. And so the Raven Society came into being.”
Johnson hopes that his work provokes readers to think about the crucial role of judges in the American system of government.
He’s currently hard at work on his second novel featuring Eric Ridge. “Since I’m a pantser, all I can say is I’m halfway to the first draft at about 50 thousand words.”
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