I hope you can forgive me a few personal moments this week. For some time now, I’ve been pondering an occasional series of articles about those events in my life, those key moments, that steered me towards the writing profession. I held back for a little while. Would it be too personal, too introspective? Or would it be interesting? Well, you guys can judge, because I’m taking a chance and getting that ball rolling today.
In addition, I’m taking this opportunity to remind everyone that about my upcoming two-hander event with my fellow thriller-writer MW Craven in the very near future (it’s only 11 days away, in fact), in Cumbria. So, I’ll be chatting at little about that too.
On which subject, and on a not unrelated note, today would also seem an opportune time to offer a detailed review of Mr Craven’s latest masterwork, FEARLESS, an all-out action thriller set out in the sun-blistered wastes of the Chihuahuan Desert (so, a particularly good one to read this flaming June).
If you’re only here for the Craven review, I’ve no problem with that. You’ll find it as usual in the Thrillers, Chillers section at the lower end of today’s column. Before then, here’s the other stuff ...
Meeting our public
A quick reminder that on Tuesday July 4, MW Craven and I will be chatting to our public in the Kendal branch of Waterstones, and event running 6.30 to 9pm. Mike will be talking about FEARLESS, his explosive new action thriller, and very likely the commencement of a brand-new series, while I, briefly, am veering away from the world of guns, armed robbers and terrorists, to discuss USURPER, my most recent novel, which is also an action adventure, but this one set 1,000 years ago at the height of the Norman Conquest of England.
Here’s a shot from last year’s event, when Mike was presenting THE BOTANIST and I was presenting NEVER SEEN AGAIN. You’ll notice that my dogs, Buck and Buddy, also got in on the act.
Anyway, Feel free to pop along to the next one, folks. Get your tickets HERE. I guarantee a fun evening.
And now, something else that yet again is not entirely unrelated ...
I suppose on one hand, you could argue that the most basic requirement is to be pompous enough to believe yourself so important that others will pay to read your words.
To be honest, that’s pretty undeniable.
But on the other hand, joining the writing profession is also quite a laudable act.
Firstly, because it means you’re seeking to share wisdom, learning, expertise and even personal interest in a manner that you hope will entertain and inform others. Secondly, because you attach such value to this prospective profession that you are prepared to put in the hard yards, in exchange for rewards which, at best, can be variable and uncertain, and at worst, non-existent. In other words, you’re undertaking a vocation that you really believe in – and that’s surely a good thing, but the fact that you’re doing something ‘good’ may be the best you ever get out of it.
But of all the writers I’ve met during my life, I can’t name one who ever told me that he or she came into this world with this ambition already hardwired into them. So many, if not all, seem to have muddled their way into the profession.
But every one of us, I’m certain, has also experienced ‘Damascene moments,’ in other words has suddenly been struck by an astonishing revelation or motivation that we never saw coming, and which, while it might not have jolted us into the world of authorship at that very moment, became a persuasive factor as we continued forward in life.
Was the spur in fact, that would drive us on towards a very different future.
So … I thought it might be fun over this blogpost and several in the future, to highlight a few of these seminal moments in my own life when the die was indisputably cast, when I realised that there was something vastly more satisfying I could be engaged in.
Now before we start, what I am NOT talking about here is the actual, physical moment when I moved into full-time writing. In my case that was something beyond my control. It involved a series of unexpected redundancies, which, ultimately, though none were welcome at the time, removed that very difficult decision about whether or not to pack my day job in. But that’s not a particularly exciting story. The moments I’m looking for in this new occasional series are those instances of divine inspiration. Those moments when your vision clears, everything falls into place, and your reason for existing in this world is suddenly made very plain to you …
My father, Brian Finch, was a screenwriter with a career that spanned four decades, his CV ultimately containing a wealth of successful programmes: Coronation Street, The Tomorrow People, Captain Scarlet, Murphy’s Mob, Bergerac, Hunter’s Walk, Public Eye, All Creatures Great and Small, among many others, culminating of course in the BAFTA he won in 1999 for Goodnight Mister Tom.
Yet, this wasn’t the whole story.
As I grew up in Wigan in the 1960s and early 1970s, my father was a local news reporter and a wannabe writer who was still jobbing his talents around. The earnings weren’t particularly great, of course.
And yet, somehow, as we progressed into and through the 1970s, my father’s writing career blossomed, and more and more celebrities came in and out of our lives. (The image right shows my Dad at a Coronation Street party with Violet Carson, aka Ena Sharples, some time circa 1969/1970).
I honestly could spin a hundred anecdotes relating to this.
For example, when the phone rang one evening and my mother answered, a boomy and distinctive voice asked: ‘Is Brian there?” When my mother replied, “I’ll just get him for you, Frankie,” the voice said, “How did you know it was me, dear?” My mum: “There’s only one Frankie Howerd.” The voice: “Ooooo!”
Then, there was the script-meeting in our front room for my Dad’s Rugby League drama, Fallen Hero, where the ever-lovely Wanda Ventham (Benedict Cumberbatch’s mum), had to eat some of the most appalling looking cheese sandwiches, which my Dad had just made, and did so without complaint because they’d been working all day and were starving.
In a similar, informal way, my Dad introduced me to Del Henney and Ken Hutchison, two screen hardmen so convincing in those roles that you’ll probably remember them playing the two lead villains in the movie thriller, Straw Dogs, but a couple of actors who were also so versatile that they’d play good guys in my Dad’s dramas.
I could go on and on about this, but it would get boring.
The point is that it was all so gradual a process that I wasn’t aware of it being anything unusual. If my Dad casually mentioned that he’d just been speaking on the phone for half an hour to Boris Karloff, it meant nothing to me. These were the sorts of people my Dad knew.
Which brings us back to Granada Television, the home of Coronation Street, and umpteen other shows my Dad worked on.
Granada TV was the brainchild of media mogul, Sidney Bernstein, and one of the original four independent television franchises created in 1954. It covered Manchester, Lancashire, Merseyside, Cumbria, Cheshire, North Wales and parts of Yorkshire, and was praised by TV critics for the distinctively northern and ‘socially realistic’ nature of its programming.
My Dad considered it the thumping heart of independent television in that era. I visited the studio with him again and again over many years, to drop scripts off, to watch the filming of Sherlock Holmes (and get to shake hands with Jeremy Brett), or to stand quietly by while he discussed potential new children’s shows with such diverse TV personalities as Ken Dodd and Charlie Caroli.
When it came to widespread family entertainment, Granada TV was unbeatable. And yet, it never felt like a privilege being there and interacting with those who were integral to it.
You may wonder, given the background I’ve just outlined, what the hell possessed me.
Well, ever since I was a lad, I’d always wanted to be a copper. Even though I’d been a dab hand at writing stories while at school, in my early adulthood I had no interest in that. I wanted to go out and lock up villains. Even when I was being interviewed for the job at Chester House, the chief superintendent on the other side of the desk said something to the effect of: ‘Your father’s a well-known television writer. Do you not want to do the same thing?’
I gave what a thought was a very honest answer, perhaps riskily honest. I said: ‘I may do at some point, but I’ve no interest in that yet.’
To which he smiled and said: ’Well, if nothing else, we’ll certainly give you lots of grist for that mill.’ (And how prophetic that turned out to be).
But the yearning to write didn’t come yet. In many ways, the job completely absorbed me, left its mark even when I was off-duty. You worked long and difficult hours, were in constant high stress situations, and spent almost every shift dealing with people who were having the worst day of their lives. The difference between dreaming about the police and policing for real is an abyssal gulf.
Some of it was terrifically exciting, but some of it was more than a little bit depressing.
For example, when you went into rooms, often in the most desolate parts of town, that you would never forget as long as you lived ... rooms you would keep on revisiting in your dreams.
On one such occasion, after I’d discharged all my duties as a first responder, I remember stomping up the stairs to the roof of the high rise in question, and gazing bleary-eyed across the silent, benighted cityscapes of Salford and Manchester, finally focussing on that distant neon sign, shimmering cherry-red: GRANADA TV.
A rush of happy memories came back to me. For half a second, at that terrible time in that terrible place, I was relocated back to my early life, when I’d been surrounded by these stars of stage and screen without really knowing it, when I’d been immersed in that atmosphere of entertainment and creativity, which I’d so taken for granted at the time.
I knew there and then that I didn’t just want to go back to that world, I had to.
MOMENTS THAT MATTERED
What on earth is it that could make you want to be a writer?
I suppose on one hand, you could argue that the most basic requirement is to be pompous enough to believe yourself so important that others will pay to read your words.
To be honest, that’s pretty undeniable.
But of all the writers I’ve met during my life, I can’t name one who ever told me that he or she came into this world with this ambition already hardwired into them. So many, if not all, seem to have muddled their way into the profession.
Even those among us who toyed with the idea of becoming writers when we were young often had other careers to take care of first. Some of these we might have enjoyed a great deal. Others we merely tolerated because we had to get the money in. Either way, they filled our time and thoughts.
Was the spur in fact, that would drive us on towards a very different future.
So … I thought it might be fun over this blogpost and several in the future, to highlight a few of these seminal moments in my own life when the die was indisputably cast, when I realised that there was something vastly more satisfying I could be engaged in.
Now before we start, what I am NOT talking about here is the actual, physical moment when I moved into full-time writing. In my case that was something beyond my control. It involved a series of unexpected redundancies, which, ultimately, though none were welcome at the time, removed that very difficult decision about whether or not to pack my day job in. But that’s not a particularly exciting story. The moments I’m looking for in this new occasional series are those instances of divine inspiration. Those moments when your vision clears, everything falls into place, and your reason for existing in this world is suddenly made very plain to you …
SPUR #1 – GRANADA TELEVISION
One of my greatest inspirations, and I’m aware that I’ll need to explain this, was Granada Television.
My father, Brian Finch, was a screenwriter with a career that spanned four decades, his CV ultimately containing a wealth of successful programmes: Coronation Street, The Tomorrow People, Captain Scarlet, Murphy’s Mob, Bergerac, Hunter’s Walk, Public Eye, All Creatures Great and Small, among many others, culminating of course in the BAFTA he won in 1999 for Goodnight Mister Tom.
Yet, this wasn’t the whole story.
As I grew up in Wigan in the 1960s and early 1970s, my father was a local news reporter and a wannabe writer who was still jobbing his talents around. The earnings weren’t particularly great, of course.
Though I’ve undoubtedly led a mostly middle-class existence, we were a working-class family by origin, my two grandfathers a coal miner and a gasworks foreman. I myself spent my formative years living in a terraced house. I only mention this to show that, as a youngster, I had a very conventional experience of the industrial northern town that was Wigan.
I honestly could spin a hundred anecdotes relating to this.
For example, when the phone rang one evening and my mother answered, a boomy and distinctive voice asked: ‘Is Brian there?” When my mother replied, “I’ll just get him for you, Frankie,” the voice said, “How did you know it was me, dear?” My mum: “There’s only one Frankie Howerd.” The voice: “Ooooo!”
Then, there was the script-meeting in our front room for my Dad’s Rugby League drama, Fallen Hero, where the ever-lovely Wanda Ventham (Benedict Cumberbatch’s mum), had to eat some of the most appalling looking cheese sandwiches, which my Dad had just made, and did so without complaint because they’d been working all day and were starving.
I could go on and on about this, but it would get boring.
The point is that it was all so gradual a process that I wasn’t aware of it being anything unusual. If my Dad casually mentioned that he’d just been speaking on the phone for half an hour to Boris Karloff, it meant nothing to me. These were the sorts of people my Dad knew.
Which brings us back to Granada Television, the home of Coronation Street, and umpteen other shows my Dad worked on.
Granada TV was the brainchild of media mogul, Sidney Bernstein, and one of the original four independent television franchises created in 1954. It covered Manchester, Lancashire, Merseyside, Cumbria, Cheshire, North Wales and parts of Yorkshire, and was praised by TV critics for the distinctively northern and ‘socially realistic’ nature of its programming.
My Dad considered it the thumping heart of independent television in that era. I visited the studio with him again and again over many years, to drop scripts off, to watch the filming of Sherlock Holmes (and get to shake hands with Jeremy Brett), or to stand quietly by while he discussed potential new children’s shows with such diverse TV personalities as Ken Dodd and Charlie Caroli.
When it came to widespread family entertainment, Granada TV was unbeatable. And yet, it never felt like a privilege being there and interacting with those who were integral to it.
Until the early 1980s, when I left civilian life and joined the Greater Manchester Police.
You may wonder, given the background I’ve just outlined, what the hell possessed me.
I gave what a thought was a very honest answer, perhaps riskily honest. I said: ‘I may do at some point, but I’ve no interest in that yet.’
To which he smiled and said: ’Well, if nothing else, we’ll certainly give you lots of grist for that mill.’ (And how prophetic that turned out to be).
But the yearning to write didn’t come yet. In many ways, the job completely absorbed me, left its mark even when I was off-duty. You worked long and difficult hours, were in constant high stress situations, and spent almost every shift dealing with people who were having the worst day of their lives. The difference between dreaming about the police and policing for real is an abyssal gulf.
Some of it was terrifically exciting, but some of it was more than a little bit depressing.
For example, when you went into rooms, often in the most desolate parts of town, that you would never forget as long as you lived ... rooms you would keep on revisiting in your dreams.
On one such occasion, after I’d discharged all my duties as a first responder, I remember stomping up the stairs to the roof of the high rise in question, and gazing bleary-eyed across the silent, benighted cityscapes of Salford and Manchester, finally focussing on that distant neon sign, shimmering cherry-red: GRANADA TV.
A rush of happy memories came back to me. For half a second, at that terrible time in that terrible place, I was relocated back to my early life, when I’d been surrounded by these stars of stage and screen without really knowing it, when I’d been immersed in that atmosphere of entertainment and creativity, which I’d so taken for granted at the time.
I knew there and then that I didn’t just want to go back to that world, I had to.
That was where I belonged. Not this one, as personified by that room downstairs, now in a state of chaos, the world and his brother having arrived (all too late, of course, as we nearly always were).
I’m not sure why my ambition suddenly came alive at that moment. I’d seen the Granada TV sign many times during my police service and thought nothing of it. Yes, I had vague memories of those heady days, but always considered them the distant past, a fantasy childhood that could never have meaning for me long-term. And yet somehow, that night, that sign became the most potent lure.
I signed off at the end of that shift with one objective in mind. I was leaving the cops, and by hook or by crook, I was going to worm my way into my Dad’s world … or something close to it.
I’m not sure why my ambition suddenly came alive at that moment. I’d seen the Granada TV sign many times during my police service and thought nothing of it. Yes, I had vague memories of those heady days, but always considered them the distant past, a fantasy childhood that could never have meaning for me long-term. And yet somehow, that night, that sign became the most potent lure.
I signed off at the end of that shift with one objective in mind. I was leaving the cops, and by hook or by crook, I was going to worm my way into my Dad’s world … or something close to it.
(To be continued ...)
THRILLERS, CHILLERS, SHOCKERS AND KILLERS …
An ongoing series of reviews of dark fiction (crime, thriller, horror and sci-fi) – both old and new – that I have recently read and enjoyed. I’ll endeavour to keep the SPOILERS to a minimum; there will certainly be no given-away denouements or exposed twists-in-the-tail, but by the definition of the word ‘review’, I’m going to be talking about these books in more than just thumbnail detail, extolling the aspects that I particularly enjoyed (I’ll outline the plot first, and follow it with my opinions) … so I guess if you’d rather not know anything at all about these pieces of work in advance of reading them yourself, then these particular posts will not be your thing.
FEARLESS
THRILLERS, CHILLERS, SHOCKERS AND KILLERS …
An ongoing series of reviews of dark fiction (crime, thriller, horror and sci-fi) – both old and new – that I have recently read and enjoyed. I’ll endeavour to keep the SPOILERS to a minimum; there will certainly be no given-away denouements or exposed twists-in-the-tail, but by the definition of the word ‘review’, I’m going to be talking about these books in more than just thumbnail detail, extolling the aspects that I particularly enjoyed (I’ll outline the plot first, and follow it with my opinions) … so I guess if you’d rather not know anything at all about these pieces of work in advance of reading them yourself, then these particular posts will not be your thing.
by MW Craven (2023)
Outline
Ben Koenig is a US Marshall with the Special Operations Group. Or rather, he was. At present, he’s dropped off the grid. Six years ago, he shot dead a suspect while closing in with his team on an isolated ranch where a particularly loathsome bunch of deviants were making ‘toddler versus attack dog’ movies. The deceased suspect happened to be the son of a leading member of the Russian Mafia. The Russian mob themselves were not involved in the vile racket, in fact they deplored it, but rules are rules, and as such, Koenig was marked for death.
He’s been on the run and lying low ever since.
We join the narrative with Koenig in Wayne County, New York, where, as usual, he is minding his own business. Until he is bewildered to learn from watching TV in a bar that he has made the US Marshals’ ‘Most Wanted’ list.
Even Koenig, skilled as he is, finds it difficult to disappear again when his face is suddenly on every TV screen, and he is subsequently arrested by local cops. However, this is only a ruse. In reality, US Marshals Service director, Mitch Burridge desperately needs to make contact with him. They are old mates who go way back, and Mitch would normally respect Koenig’s desire to stay out of sight, but a very serious situation has now arisen.
In short, Mitch’s pre-grad daughter, Martha, has been abducted. Inevitably, a range of security services are already on the case, but Mitch wants Koenig involved too. Not just because he’s a human bloodhound – the Devil’s Bloodhound, as some crims have come to refer to him – but because at present he’s an unofficial asset. He’s also an apex predator. If Martha Burridge is dead, as her father fears, he wants Koenig to kill those responsible.
Koenig is certainly ideal for this kind of work. Earlier in his career, a raid went south, and he was shot in the head. He survived it, but during the subsequent operation, the brain surgeon discovered that he was suffering a rare degenerative condition called Urbach-Wiethe disease, which normally causes an abnormal fear of just about everything, though in some cases, exactly the opposite can result: the patient finds that they have no fear of anything at all.
In Koenig’s case it’s the latter, which officially at least meant that further service in the field would be problematic. A man without fear could pose a high risk, not just to himself, but to his colleagues. Not wishing to lose a talented operator like Koenig to permanent deskwork, the Service responded by sending him off to train with some of the world’s most elite spec ops, the SAS, the Navy SEALS and so on, where he would compensate for his lack of fear by learning how to make professional judgements based on knowledge and acquired skill. It also meant that, when he finally got back in the field, he was by far the deadliest man in the US Marshals.
Living up to this reputation, Koenig guarantees Mitch that he will find Martha, or discover what happened to her, and will do whatever it takes to make this happen.
The first part of Koenig’s investigation takes him to DC, and Georgetown Uni, where Martha was studying. Her academic supervisor, Robin Marston, is a Marxist professor who regards it as his civic duty to impede law enforcement wherever he can. Koenig has no time for this, and gets rough with Marston, leading the frightened academic to admit that he hasn’t given all of Martha’s files to the Washington PD. However, before Marston can retrieve the info he has held back, he is shot and killed by an unknown female assassin, who takes out a campus cop at the same time.
Perhaps inevitably, Koenig, who’s already knocked Marston around, is blamed, and finds himself back in custody, in a local holding cell. While he’s in there, on suspicion that he’s just another crazy shooter, two white supremacist hoodlums are put in with him, clearly under orders to finish him off. The resulting fight is violent, but it leaves one of the neo-Nazis dead and the other badly injured. Frustrated, the cops look to charge Koenig with murder anyway, only for one of their senior ranks to engineer his escape from the precinct.
Increasingly suspecting that this whole thing is a set-up, and that somehow or other, there is official involvement in the kidnapping of Martha Burridge, Koenig has no choice but to accept the cops’ escape route. At which point he is confronted by an old colleague of his, Jen Draper, a top agent who also happens to hate him. Unsure what to make of this, Koenig stumbles to a halt.
Draper meanwhile, raises her pistol. And fires …
Review
In my opinion, the acid test for any thriller is whether or not it thrills. Does it intrigue you? Does it excite you? Does it keep you hooked? It’s not a genre for which great writing and unforgettable characters are often considered essential ingredients, which makes MW Craven’s work all the more impressive. Because if there is one thing Mike Craven is, it’s a hell of a writer across the board.
First of all, let’s deal with the thriller aspects of Fearless, because they are here in abundance.
A few reviewers have suggested that Ben Koenig will be the new Jack Reacher. At first glance there are undeniable similarities. Like Reacher, Koenig is a drifter out there in the vastness of the US. Also like Reacher, he has a law-enforcement background but is also highly trained in the skills of violence. In addition, though he’s as rough and ready as they come on the outside, he also has a deep moral sense and innate hostility to those who do wrong, at whatever level of society they predate on the innocent. And again, pretty much like Jack Reacher, he encounters these warped individuals plenty often during his ramblings.
But here, to be honest, the similarity ends.
Koenig is not a physical giant who can knock six guys out with a single punch. By the same token, he is still, officially at least, a cop rather than a vigilante, and the investigations he often undertakes are official, albeit the legalities are clouded by the sort of uncertainties that only black ops can generate. (All this said, it would be remiss of me not to mention the amusing moment in the novel, when Mitch Burridge remonstrates with Koenig for going ‘all Jack Reacher’ on them).
If anything, for me, there are probably more links between Ben Koenig and one of Craven’s parallel characters, Washington Poe. At first glance, you might disagree. Poe, you’d rightly argue is a regular police officer based in the north of England, and he is governed by the numerous controls that prevent British cops using extreme methods. But Poe, who also has a military background, resents that. He can function inside the framework, but he doesn’t like it. He’ll readily strongarm villains if it’s required, because he sympathises with the law-abiding public ahead of them. On top of that, he’s an arch-cynic, and displays this attitude with just about everyone, friend and foe alike, and definitely to his superiors. In all these ways, and others, he is similar to Koenig, though Koenig, by the nature of who he is and what he does, and because he has almost no limits imposed on him in his efforts to secure justice, is the next stage along in terms of ferocity.
Koenig also has the fearlessness factor, which is an ingenious way of explaining the recklessness he displays in his pursuit of the novel’s antagonists (and also a good way for the author to make him seem unreliable to his superiors without calling his abilities into question).
If I was to liken Ben Koenig to any other action hero currently bestriding the genre, it would be Robert McCall, as interpreted by Denzel Washington in The Equalizer franchise, because Koenig, while he often keeps tight control of himself, is guaranteed bad news for the opposition in that he’s ruthless and vengeful, and when he tells a bad guy that he’s going to kill him, you know that it’s no idle threat. But also, and this is the most intriguing aspect of Ben Koenig, because he is so amazingly disciplined and methodical.
Outline
Ben Koenig is a US Marshall with the Special Operations Group. Or rather, he was. At present, he’s dropped off the grid. Six years ago, he shot dead a suspect while closing in with his team on an isolated ranch where a particularly loathsome bunch of deviants were making ‘toddler versus attack dog’ movies. The deceased suspect happened to be the son of a leading member of the Russian Mafia. The Russian mob themselves were not involved in the vile racket, in fact they deplored it, but rules are rules, and as such, Koenig was marked for death.
He’s been on the run and lying low ever since.
We join the narrative with Koenig in Wayne County, New York, where, as usual, he is minding his own business. Until he is bewildered to learn from watching TV in a bar that he has made the US Marshals’ ‘Most Wanted’ list.
Even Koenig, skilled as he is, finds it difficult to disappear again when his face is suddenly on every TV screen, and he is subsequently arrested by local cops. However, this is only a ruse. In reality, US Marshals Service director, Mitch Burridge desperately needs to make contact with him. They are old mates who go way back, and Mitch would normally respect Koenig’s desire to stay out of sight, but a very serious situation has now arisen.
In short, Mitch’s pre-grad daughter, Martha, has been abducted. Inevitably, a range of security services are already on the case, but Mitch wants Koenig involved too. Not just because he’s a human bloodhound – the Devil’s Bloodhound, as some crims have come to refer to him – but because at present he’s an unofficial asset. He’s also an apex predator. If Martha Burridge is dead, as her father fears, he wants Koenig to kill those responsible.
Koenig is certainly ideal for this kind of work. Earlier in his career, a raid went south, and he was shot in the head. He survived it, but during the subsequent operation, the brain surgeon discovered that he was suffering a rare degenerative condition called Urbach-Wiethe disease, which normally causes an abnormal fear of just about everything, though in some cases, exactly the opposite can result: the patient finds that they have no fear of anything at all.
In Koenig’s case it’s the latter, which officially at least meant that further service in the field would be problematic. A man without fear could pose a high risk, not just to himself, but to his colleagues. Not wishing to lose a talented operator like Koenig to permanent deskwork, the Service responded by sending him off to train with some of the world’s most elite spec ops, the SAS, the Navy SEALS and so on, where he would compensate for his lack of fear by learning how to make professional judgements based on knowledge and acquired skill. It also meant that, when he finally got back in the field, he was by far the deadliest man in the US Marshals.
Living up to this reputation, Koenig guarantees Mitch that he will find Martha, or discover what happened to her, and will do whatever it takes to make this happen.
The first part of Koenig’s investigation takes him to DC, and Georgetown Uni, where Martha was studying. Her academic supervisor, Robin Marston, is a Marxist professor who regards it as his civic duty to impede law enforcement wherever he can. Koenig has no time for this, and gets rough with Marston, leading the frightened academic to admit that he hasn’t given all of Martha’s files to the Washington PD. However, before Marston can retrieve the info he has held back, he is shot and killed by an unknown female assassin, who takes out a campus cop at the same time.
Perhaps inevitably, Koenig, who’s already knocked Marston around, is blamed, and finds himself back in custody, in a local holding cell. While he’s in there, on suspicion that he’s just another crazy shooter, two white supremacist hoodlums are put in with him, clearly under orders to finish him off. The resulting fight is violent, but it leaves one of the neo-Nazis dead and the other badly injured. Frustrated, the cops look to charge Koenig with murder anyway, only for one of their senior ranks to engineer his escape from the precinct.
Increasingly suspecting that this whole thing is a set-up, and that somehow or other, there is official involvement in the kidnapping of Martha Burridge, Koenig has no choice but to accept the cops’ escape route. At which point he is confronted by an old colleague of his, Jen Draper, a top agent who also happens to hate him. Unsure what to make of this, Koenig stumbles to a halt.
Draper meanwhile, raises her pistol. And fires …
Review
In my opinion, the acid test for any thriller is whether or not it thrills. Does it intrigue you? Does it excite you? Does it keep you hooked? It’s not a genre for which great writing and unforgettable characters are often considered essential ingredients, which makes MW Craven’s work all the more impressive. Because if there is one thing Mike Craven is, it’s a hell of a writer across the board.
First of all, let’s deal with the thriller aspects of Fearless, because they are here in abundance.
A few reviewers have suggested that Ben Koenig will be the new Jack Reacher. At first glance there are undeniable similarities. Like Reacher, Koenig is a drifter out there in the vastness of the US. Also like Reacher, he has a law-enforcement background but is also highly trained in the skills of violence. In addition, though he’s as rough and ready as they come on the outside, he also has a deep moral sense and innate hostility to those who do wrong, at whatever level of society they predate on the innocent. And again, pretty much like Jack Reacher, he encounters these warped individuals plenty often during his ramblings.
But here, to be honest, the similarity ends.
Koenig is not a physical giant who can knock six guys out with a single punch. By the same token, he is still, officially at least, a cop rather than a vigilante, and the investigations he often undertakes are official, albeit the legalities are clouded by the sort of uncertainties that only black ops can generate. (All this said, it would be remiss of me not to mention the amusing moment in the novel, when Mitch Burridge remonstrates with Koenig for going ‘all Jack Reacher’ on them).
If anything, for me, there are probably more links between Ben Koenig and one of Craven’s parallel characters, Washington Poe. At first glance, you might disagree. Poe, you’d rightly argue is a regular police officer based in the north of England, and he is governed by the numerous controls that prevent British cops using extreme methods. But Poe, who also has a military background, resents that. He can function inside the framework, but he doesn’t like it. He’ll readily strongarm villains if it’s required, because he sympathises with the law-abiding public ahead of them. On top of that, he’s an arch-cynic, and displays this attitude with just about everyone, friend and foe alike, and definitely to his superiors. In all these ways, and others, he is similar to Koenig, though Koenig, by the nature of who he is and what he does, and because he has almost no limits imposed on him in his efforts to secure justice, is the next stage along in terms of ferocity.
Koenig also has the fearlessness factor, which is an ingenious way of explaining the recklessness he displays in his pursuit of the novel’s antagonists (and also a good way for the author to make him seem unreliable to his superiors without calling his abilities into question).
If I was to liken Ben Koenig to any other action hero currently bestriding the genre, it would be Robert McCall, as interpreted by Denzel Washington in The Equalizer franchise, because Koenig, while he often keeps tight control of himself, is guaranteed bad news for the opposition in that he’s ruthless and vengeful, and when he tells a bad guy that he’s going to kill him, you know that it’s no idle threat. But also, and this is the most intriguing aspect of Ben Koenig, because he is so amazingly disciplined and methodical.
Because this novel is written in the first person, it’s full of fascinating thought processes, as Koenig makes highly professional assessments of each and every predicament, reminding us constantly about the psychology of the opposition, about the potential of different weapons, about the advantages and disadvantages posed by each new location, about the best vehicles to use, about the distances he’ll need to travel, and the speed he’ll need to travel at, in order to disarm, cripple or kill an opponent, even about the different means available to him, sometimes which he must go out of his way to acquire, to foil sophisticated alarm systems or fox professional security staff.
There is a plethora of such info in Fearless, but at no stage is it intrusive. For me, it illuminates the book, first of all because it assures the reader that our main protagonist is a real professional who knows exactly what he’s doing, and secondly because it offers a full and convincing explanation for why our main hero wins such regular and improbable victories. It absolutely is NOT the case, as we were so used to in Schwarzenegger and Stallone movies, that Koenig just turns up at the crucial moment, often having blundered his way there, and takes out every bad guy either because he has a bigger gun than they do or because they’re just rank poor shots.
And yet this explanatory undertone is all done so succinctly and so interestingly that you can’t help but be seduced by it. And that brings me onto the quality of the writing itself.
Whether he’s describing tense one-to-ones between vividly drawn and distinctive characters (all multi-levelled, not all of them even remotely likeable), whether it’s atmospheric description of the unforgiving badlands or, yes, those frequent, bone-crunching action sequences, Craven hits the mark each time. He’s a wordsmith of high technical skill. He can paint pretty pictures, but he keeps then tight and ultra-believable, and he knows how to let the narrative flow. It’s superb writing all-round, and it totally merits that overly-used honour ‘unputdownable’.
More than likely, you’ll already know what you’re going to get with Fearless, but I’d just reiterate that this is one serious cut above the rest of the action-thriller genre. It’s high-quality work, and all built around an intriguing new character, who frankly, has got film and/or TV written all over him.
And now, here I go with my usual ill-advised attempt to cast this beast before the real film and TV people get their grubby mitts on it. It’s only a laugh, but hell, someone’s got to do it.
Ben Koenig – Sebastian Stan
Jen Draper – Emily Blunt
Mitch Burridge – Forest Whitaker
Peyton North – Scott Adkins
Samuel – John David Washington
There is a plethora of such info in Fearless, but at no stage is it intrusive. For me, it illuminates the book, first of all because it assures the reader that our main protagonist is a real professional who knows exactly what he’s doing, and secondly because it offers a full and convincing explanation for why our main hero wins such regular and improbable victories. It absolutely is NOT the case, as we were so used to in Schwarzenegger and Stallone movies, that Koenig just turns up at the crucial moment, often having blundered his way there, and takes out every bad guy either because he has a bigger gun than they do or because they’re just rank poor shots.
And yet this explanatory undertone is all done so succinctly and so interestingly that you can’t help but be seduced by it. And that brings me onto the quality of the writing itself.
Whether he’s describing tense one-to-ones between vividly drawn and distinctive characters (all multi-levelled, not all of them even remotely likeable), whether it’s atmospheric description of the unforgiving badlands or, yes, those frequent, bone-crunching action sequences, Craven hits the mark each time. He’s a wordsmith of high technical skill. He can paint pretty pictures, but he keeps then tight and ultra-believable, and he knows how to let the narrative flow. It’s superb writing all-round, and it totally merits that overly-used honour ‘unputdownable’.
More than likely, you’ll already know what you’re going to get with Fearless, but I’d just reiterate that this is one serious cut above the rest of the action-thriller genre. It’s high-quality work, and all built around an intriguing new character, who frankly, has got film and/or TV written all over him.
And now, here I go with my usual ill-advised attempt to cast this beast before the real film and TV people get their grubby mitts on it. It’s only a laugh, but hell, someone’s got to do it.
Ben Koenig – Sebastian Stan
Jen Draper – Emily Blunt
Mitch Burridge – Forest Whitaker
Peyton North – Scott Adkins
Samuel – John David Washington
Great blog again Paul. You often cause me to remember the things I grew up reading and watching. And it triggers a lot of cultural reference points from my youth. Cheers. And look forward to the book as well. :)
ReplyDeleteYou're more than welcome, Pat. Many thanks.
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