Fearless - M V Craven

 I discovered Mike Craven in Maxim Jakubowski's Birds, Strangers, Psychos anthology.   That was a short story in his Poe and Tilly series.   I looked in my local library and found this, the first novel in his US-set Ben Koenig series.

Koenig is a specially trained US marshal who went off the grid when a Russian mobster put a $5m bounty on his head for killing his son in a raid.   Six years later Koenig is tracked down by his former boss, Director of Marshals' Service, Mitch Burridge.   Someone has abducted Mitch's daughter; Mitch wants Koenig to track whoever it is down, recover young Martha, and wreak massive violence on the perps.   Both men know that the chances of Martha being alive are remote.

Mitch wants Koenig for the job not only for his special training.   The reason Koenig was chosen for special training is that he has Urbach-Wiethe disease: he literally cannot feel fear.

The first thing that impressed me was the depth of the backstory Craven has created.  I assumed there had been an earlier novel in which all this happened.   Oh no - this is the first, the place we start from.   And there's tons more about training, techniques, tactics, all of which is seamlessly introduced into the story which clips along at a genuinely thrilling pace.   In part, Craven is able to maintain the pace for over four hundred pages because he writes in short, sharp chapters, 127 of them.   There are many chapters where Koenig is simply travelling or observing, ideal opportunities to slip in some information and thus avoid the boredom of what the hero is actually doing.

The plotting is absolutely superb.   Where Craven got the idea for what is actually happening is beyond me.   I thought I was a dedicated reader of the small print and out-of-the-way news.   Not compared to Mike Craven I'm not.

Koenig is a great character.   He doesn't have the customary baggage - he doesn't have an ex-wife or girlfriend tp protect, he doesn't have a drink or drug problem, he just has the rare but genuine condition that makes him unique.   He knows all about his condition and he is well aware of the effect it has on his enemies.

I am hooked.   The next Koenig novel, published in late 2024, is Nobody's Hero.   I'm definitely reading that.   There remains the Poe/Tilly series, set in Cumbria, which I still want to try.   And a third series, also set in Cumbria, featuring the nicely-named Avison Fluke.   Plus a 'darkly funny' standalone, due out next year, called 101 Ways to Die in New York.  Yep, count me in.