Skip to main content

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 Chris Bohjalian - Fiction, Psychological Suspense, Psychological Thriller, Suspense, Thriller

1978: Temperatures are flirting with 90 on an August day when 18-year-old Mira Winston drives a golf ball from her tee toward the practice net near the clubhouse and caddy shack. The golf ball tears through the net, traveling 150 miles per hour, and slams into the temple of high school junior Kenny Foster, rupturing an artery and unleashing a torrent of blood. He’s dead before the ambulance even arrives. In the wake of this terrible accident, Mira looks for comfort in all the wrong places. But when the investigators look more closely at the torn net, when a detective recalls Mira’s history of recklessness, and when Kenny’s father spies Mira with her married lover, the affluent and mannered community turns on this once-promising young woman.

by Jeffery Deaver - Fiction, Short Stories, Suspense, Thriller

Jeffery Deaver returns with a devious collection, featuring two never-before published stories in which fan favorites Colter Shaw and Lincoln Rhyme are united by the layers of deception taking over New York City. A murder at a crime writers' conference. The method is entirely literary, and the motive seems obvious. But can the detective who was first on the scene puzzle out what needs reading between the lines? A mysterious woman has gone into hiding, and Colter Shaw is tasked with bringing her to a safe house. But with a hitman on his trails, the race toward safety takes on a whole new meaning. A serial killer with a motive never before seen in the history of crime challenges Lincoln Rhyme and Amelia Sachs to rethink everything they know about the nature of evil --- and the evidence its perpetrators leave at the scenes. 

by Riley Sager - Fiction, Horror, Psychological Suspense, Psychological Thriller, Suspense, Thriller

Struggling actress Marin Keane is shocked when she lands a role in a major motion picture about the unsolved mystery of New Avalon, an island on sprawling Lake Faraday in Vermont. She’s even more surprised when she learns that the role requires a weeklong research trip to that very spot. A century ago, New Avalon was a commune for spiritual mediums --- until they all vanished in 1926. The only trace of them was five dresses hanging from the branches of an old oak tree in the middle of the island. Not long after arriving, Marin and her castmates --- including legendary actress Violet Wright and white-hot director Ronan Peters --- begin to realize that all is not right with New Avalon. And after a sudden health emergency leaves Marin, Ronan and the other actors stranded on the island, the disappearances begin again.

by Lisa Gardner - Fiction, Mystery, Suspense, Thriller

Raquel, a renowned interior designer, and Theo, a brash financial wizard, met and married in a matter of months, only to confront a terrible tragedy. Now, they’ve come to a remote town in New Hampshire to begin anew. Perched on a ledge with stunning views, the Dixons’ family lodge was once a crown jewel of the mountains. Until late one August night, when both parents and their four children vanished, leaving behind a trail of bloody footprints and a mystery that has endured for 30 years. Its latest occupants, Raquel and Theo, are arriving, and the former grand lodge is once more stirring to life. When a stray dog leads to the discovery of a skeleton on the property, Raquel and Theo face a daunting choice of what to believe, who to trust, and how to survive.

by Joyce Maynard - Fiction, Psychological Suspense, Psychological Thriller, Suspense, Thriller

Frances believes she has found a ticket to paradise when a wealthy couple hires her for the summer as their mother’s helper at their lakefront summer home in Maine. Best of all, she gets to spend the summer with Forrest Emerson, her father's charismatic childhood friend who escaped their neighborhood when he married into money. But below the glittering surface of Lake Catherine, nothing is what it seems. When Forrest’s wife, Regina, pulls Frances into her private obsession, the girl finds herself witness to the intimate secrets of adult lives. As the summer heat builds, so do the tensions within Wonderland’s walls. By Labor Day, a death will shatter the seemingly perfect family, leaving Frances to question everything she thought she knew about privilege, power and the price of belonging.

by Carol Goodman - Fiction, Mystery, Psychological Suspense, Psychological Thriller, Suspense, Thriller

Fred and Thea Morgan-Lane coauthor the wildly successful Death Takes a Holiday series, and they’ve been invited to the Italian castle where it all began for a mystery conference celebrating their first novel, Death Takes the Castle. But 20 years and 20 books after they met, Thea wants out. Shortly after their arrival at the beautiful Castellarosa, a shocking death takes place when the wrong person drinks a cocktail meant for Thea. Could someone be trying to kill her? When a second death occurs, a disturbing pattern emerges. These deaths aren’t random --- they’re following the murders in Death Takes the Castle exactly. In order to save the day --- and maybe even their marriage --- the unhappy couple will have to work together to figure out who is using their book as a blueprint for a killing spree.

by Mark Billingham - Fiction, Mystery, Suspense, Thriller

The Shadow Step: One taken simultaneously by a pair of dancers facing the same direction, one of them behind and slightly shifted leftwards ("in the shadow"). A perfectly executed shadow step demonstrates synchronized elegance. It showcases a couple in near telepathic harmony with one another. It normally does not end with someone stone-dead in a lake. DS Declan Miller is a magnet for strange cases, but an innocent man confessing to the crime? That’s a first. Things rapidly escalate when the murder that isn’t really a murder attracts the unwanted attention of a drug Queenpin, a deranged ex-squaddie, and a lovesick gangland enforcer. And when a real murder follows --- and a student is kidnapped --- all evidence points back to the same innocent man.

by Jeff Abbott - Fiction, Suspense, Thriller

A disgraced intel officer anxious to redeem herself after a disastrous mission, January Holte vows to uncover the identity of a traitor who is selling her agency's secrets. The few clues she's found have led her to a sleepy river town: Lethey, Texas --- and to Bill Connors, the one man who might know the truth. July Whitlock, a rookie bodyguard, searches for his one and only client, who has suddenly disappeared. He follows a trail to Lethey to find his missing protectee: Bill Connors. But Bill's friends and enemies in Lethey have secrets of their own. And as January and July ask questions no one wants to answer, they find a tangled web of murder, greed and ambition --- one that will kill anyone who tries to unravel its mysteries.

by Søren Sveistrup - Fiction, Psychological Suspense, Psychological Thriller, Suspense, Thriller

A strange voice from inside the woods, repeating a child’s counting rhyme. A body discovered in the water. Thirty years later, a woman begins receiving a string of anonymous text messages, repeating that same rhyme. Then she disappears. On Valentine’s Day, detectives Naia Thulin and Mark Hess are searching to find the missing woman. But when they uncover links to a decades-old cold case, their investigation takes a terrifying turn. A violent killer is on the loose. Can Hess and Thulin catch them before they strike again?

by Christopher Golden - Fiction, Horror, Supernatural Thriller, Suspense, Thriller

Maggie Wise will take your eyes. When Malcolm was growing up, the local kids made up that chant about his mother, claiming she was a witch. He and his siblings did their best to ignore it. Now, Maggie is dying, and those same siblings have left Malcolm and his sister-in-law, Violet, to hold a vigil at her bedside. A dark figure waits and watches from beneath the willow tree across the street. Hundreds of miles away, an ancient evil stirs in its burrow under a farmer’s cornfield. Across the country, other buried things begin to dream in anticipation of Maggie’s demise. On her deathbed, the old woman elicits a promise from Malcolm: When she dies, he and Violet must return her body to her birthplace. From the moment she takes her last breath, there are forces trying to stop Malcolm from fulfilling that promise.