Fearless

CWA Gold Dagger winner Craven (Dead Ground) ventures to the U.S. for the first time in this tense but underwhelming series launch about the search for a kidnapping victim in Texas's Chihuahuan Desert. Anchoring the action is Ben Koenig, a former U.S. marshal whose professional slipup six years earlier stirred the ire of Russian organized crime and forced him off the grid. He's lured out of the shadows by his former boss, whose daughter, Martha, has disappeared from the campus of Georgetown University, where she was studying forensic accounting. Though he suspects Martha is already dead, Koenig agrees to investigate. Rumors that Martha was researching a suspicious energy company lead Koenig to Gauntlet, Tex., where a solar farm has sprung up, owned by a former Georgetown student with a questionable past. Once there, Koenig leans on his military training to muscle through a high-octane rescue mission. Craven excels at writing action, and his strong prose has occasional Chandleresque overtones--a worn-out waitress has "a smile like a coffin lid." The plot, though, suffers from jumpy pacing and distracting contrivances, with certain key coincidences too implausible to believe. Hopefully, Craven works out the kinks next time around. Agent: David H. Headley, DHH Literary. (July)

Off the grid for six years, former U.S. Marshal Ben Koenig is asked to find his former boss' missing daughter. Koenig was forced to leave the elite Special Operations Group when he was found to have a rare genetic disorder that makes him impervious to fear. Tagged with a $5 million bounty for killing the son of a Russian crime boss, he faked his own death and went underground. He resurfaces when the head of SOG, to whom he is devoted, summons him to find his daughter, Martha--and, in the likely event that she's dead, punish her abductors. Martha's disappearance and the death of a Georgetown professor of hers have something to do with the research she was doing into a mysterious solar energy company in Texas' Chihuahuan Desert, where the company founder's best friend died in a rock climbing accident. The business proves to be cover for a criminal operation. Working mostly alone, Koenig schools the reader on such line-of-work skills as the "two ways to kill someone quietly with a knife" and shopping for supplies ("You need more than just a fold-up toothbrush," he says, scoffing at the solo heroics of Jack Reacher even as he emulates the fictional hero). When his life is threatened, he unnerves his captors by making wisecracks. English author Craven's first series novel set in the U.S. following his British Washington Poe mysteries gets off to a strong start. But the unwinding of the plot doesn't always make sense. As one character says, "It all got a bit...metaphysical." And a little of Koenig's smugness and cold proclivity for violence go a long way. A fast-moving but slow-to-convince series debut. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.