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Ray Palen

Biography

Ray Palen


Ray Palen is an award-winning actor, drama teacher, and former executive producer/director for 15+ years of a highly successful regional theatre group that is still based on Long Island. Additionally, he is a published playwright with several short plays being registered with the Writers Guild of America. One of his short plays that featured his fictional hero, Sherlock Holmes, won first prize in a Holmes short play contest.

Ray's go-to pastime, however, has been reading. He has been an avid reader and writer throughout his life --- reading at least three books per week for as long as he can remember (a love of reading and lifelong insomnia being the dual cause of this). His book collection numbers in the thousands, and he prides himself on his rare and signed first editions. Ray has been reviewing books, movies and theatre for decades with several online and print publications.

In 2015, Ray relocated from the New York City area, where he lived his entire life, to Central Florida for a job opportunity with Walt Disney World. He also satisfied his burning itch to act again when he starred as the psychopath Harry Roat Jr. in a production of Terrence Knott's "Wait Until Dark," which was performed at Walt Disney World's Contemporary Resort. Recently, Ray has been acting at a popular theatre in Central Florida where he had starring roles in both "And Then There Were None" by Dame Agatha Christie and "Dial 'M' for Murder" by Terrence Knott. Ironically, he was cast in both plays as the villain --- which he plays off as both preferring more complex, villainous roles and relishing the opportunity to show off his native British accent! Currently he works as a Customer Operations Supervisor for the sports-tech entertainment company FanDuel.

His greatest personal production to date is his beautiful daughter, Anna, who is now seven and loves growing up in the shadow of Cinderella Castle. She already has a fond appreciation for books and reading! Ray resides just 20 minutes outside of Walt Disney World in Clermont, FL, with his wife Debbie, his little Princess Anna, and three cats (Mickey, Rory and Lorelei). There is a very good possibility that he is probably reading a novel right now. Cheers!

Ray Palen

Reviews by Ray Palen

by Cara Black - Fiction, Historical Fiction, Historical Thriller, Suspense, Thriller

After Libération, spring 1945: Seventeen-year-old Huguette Faure is a survivor. The war has taken everything from her --- both her parents and her sense of safety. Now, pregnant and on the lam, she cannot return to her childhood home in Paris. Forced to reinvent herself, she must outrun her father’s enemies, who want her dead. After narrowly avoiding jail time --- thanks to the help of a kindhearted police officer named Claude Leduc --- Huguette lands a job assisting a legendary film director. As her role develops from helping him with chores to cooking his books, she sees an opportunity to break free from the ghosts of her past once and for all.

by William Boyd - Fiction, Historical Fiction, Historical Thriller, Suspense, Thriller

1963, Guatemala. The country is in turmoil, with a presidential election looming and a charismatic, left-wing ex-priest and trade union leader predicted to win. United Fruits, a giant American corporation responsible for a large percentage of the country’s GNP, is not pleased by this prospect. Neither is the CIA. Amid the uncertainty, Gabriel Dax arrives on orders from his MI6 handler Faith Green, who has tasked him with assessing the fallout from the election. Upon arrival, Gabriel meets Frank Sartorius, the local CIA agent. Despite Sartorius’ genial manner, Gabriel suspects something untrustworthy brewing under the surface. Soon, a political assassination with suspicions of Mafia involvement leads to riots. But when Green compels Gabriel to investigate some shady characters in West Berlin, it becomes clear that an even greater danger is afoot.

by Emma Stonex - Fiction, Literary Fiction, Literary Mystery, Mystery, Suspense, Thriller

Birdie Keller wakes one freezing January morning to the news she’s been waiting 18 years to hear. Jimmy Maguire, the man who killed her sister, has been freed from jail. She leaves for London with a pistol and a plan: to find this man and make him pay. But every story has two sides. Jimmy can sense he’s being hunted. He knew Birdie a long time ago, in a life she’d sooner forget, and he isn’t the only one with something to hide. As the two circle each other in a heart-stopping game of cat and mouse, they plunge into a murky world of family secrets, betrayals and unsolved mysteries.

by Matthew Pearl - Fiction, Psychological Suspense, Psychological Thriller, Suspense, Thriller

David Trent is an aspiring novelist in Cambridge, Massachusetts, trying to navigate his ambitions in a place that has writers around every corner. He lives in an apartment above a Very Famous Author named Silas Hale. Beneath his celebrated image, Silas is a bombastic, vindictive monster who refuses to allow his new neighbor even to make eye contact with him. Until young David wins a prestigious award for his new book. Suddenly Silas is interested --- if intensely spiteful. But soon, the administrator of the award comes to David with alarming news, forcing the writer into a desperate set of choices. Fate intervenes --- with shocking consequences.

by Charles Todd - Fiction, Historical Fiction, Historical Mystery, Mystery

December 1921: Being single and a new Chief, Inspector Ian Rutledge of Scotland Yard gets the short straw at Christmastime and is called upon by Chief Superintendent Markum to go to the Kentish home of a lord recovering from an attempt on his life. In bed with a concussion, the man is convinced someone is trying to kill him after he claims he was struck by the hoof of a running horse whose rider never stopped to check on him. Struggling with his own demons from the war and misgivings about helping a man who, as a colonel, oversaw the suffering of those on the frontlines from afar, Rutledge undertakes an uneasy investigation. And as the winter holiday approaches, he becomes increasingly convinced that nothing is as it seems.

by Marshall Karp - Fiction, Suspense, Thriller

It's 11:59. And the city that never sleeps is afraid to get out of bed. A bomb explodes in a crowded New York subway station at exactly 11:59am. The next day, a second blast rips through a busy department store --- again at 11:59.  As the bombs go off with clockwork precision, the death toll climbs and businesses shut their doors as the city hunkers down in fear. NYPD Red Detectives Kylie MacDonald and Zach Jordan face their most twisted case ever, as they race against the clock in search of one man who has vowed "to destroy New York City the way it destroyed my family."

by Christina Henry - Fiction, Gothic, Horror, Supernatural Thriller, Suspense, Thriller

On an otherwise ordinary street in Chicago, there is a house. An abandoned house where, once upon a time, terrible things happened. The children who live on this block are told by their parents to stay away from it. But of course, children don’t listen. Jessie Campanelli dared her little brother, Paul, to go inside. But unlike all the other kids who went inside that abandoned house, Paul didn’t return. His two friends, Jake and Richie, said that the house ate Paul. Of course, adults didn’t believe that. They thought someone kidnapped Paul or otherwise hurt him. His disappearance broke Jessie’s family apart in ways that would never be repaired. Jessie kept living on the same street where the house that ate her brother sat, crouched and waiting. And darkness seemed to spread out from that house, a darkness that was alive --- alive and hungry.

by James Patterson - Fiction, Suspense, Thriller

The suspense classic ALONG CAME A SPIDER introduced an unsurpassed rivalry: Detective Alex Cross versus Gary Soneji. But that wasn’t their first meeting. Police discover that Soneji kept a murder book, Profiles in Homicidal Genius, detailing his transformation from substitute teacher to hardened serial killer --- including clues that imply missteps that Alex Cross may have made as a rookie homicide detective. Now, Alex must retrace the steps of that long-ago investigation and face…the RETURN OF THE SPIDER.

by Mike Lupica - Fiction, Mystery

Vic Hale is one of the biggest --- and loudest --- podcasters in the nation and got there by spewing overheated rhetoric that’s reviled by some but loved by even more. His particular brand of “entertainment” is so successful, he’s about to sign the biggest contract in the history of online broadcasting. Vic is riding high…until he gets a visit from Spenser. Spenser is there on behalf of Daniel Lopez, a young man who believes Hale may be his father. It’s a potentially explosive revelation for a man in the podcaster’s position, and it might even be enough to blow up his massive new deal. That could explain the bodies that start popping up --- bodies connected in one way or another with the mystery surrounding Daniel’s birth. There are a lot of questions remaining, and Spenser is going to have to find the answers before someone shuts Hale or Daniel up for good.

by Gilly Macmillan - Fiction, Psychological Suspense, Psychological Thriller, Suspense, Thriller

On a frigid, windswept day in Scotland’s Western Hebrides, Eleanor Bruton’s body is discovered on the shore. Little did Eleanor’s family know that she was harboring a dark and all-consuming secret --- a scrap of fraying embroidery that seems worthless at first glance. For over a century, two rival organizations of women have gone to deadly lengths to secure the valuable artifact in the hopes of finding the original medieval manuscript from which it was torn. When Dr. Anya Brown garners international attention for her translation of the cryptic Folio 9, she is handpicked by Diana Cornish, a professor and high-ranking member of the Fellowship, to join the exclusive Institute of Manuscript Studies in St. Andrews. Unbeknownst to Anya, she’s been recruited at great personal danger to translate ancient texts that the Fellowship believes critical to their mission.