Ben Koenig books 1 and 2
Flatiron Books
The Ben Koenig series by M. W. Craven will remind readers of a Lee Child type of hero.
“They are very different styles and there’s an easy explanation for that, since they we’re written 10 years apart. I wrote the first one, Fearless, in 2015, but it didn’t really get picked up until 2000. I honestly think it was about eight or nine years apart that I wrote the second book, so the style is very much like my current style as there’s a bit more humor in it and the spy thing kind of happened by accident. And just like my Washington Poe series in in the UK, each of these books is very different to the previous one. I try not to go over the same ground.”
In Fearless, the main character, Ben Koenig, used to head the US Marshal’s elite Special Operations Group. His team hunted the bad guys. But after a bounty was put on his head he disappeared, going on six years now. Unfortunately, his face appeared on every television screen in the country and his cover is blown. But he is rescued by his boss in the US Marshals who asks him to find his daughter, which Ben agrees to.
“Ben is distrustful, thinks he is invincible, curious, calm, fearless, stubborn, and a lateral thinker. Ben has this condition, Urbach-Wiethe, where 1% of the time it goes the other way, which is how Ben acts. He does not recognize dangerous situations. The example I use is that there is a lion in this alley and Ben would walk down it, anyway, not realizing he should be afraid. He is also a former SOG of the US Marshals, basically an assault team.”
In Nobody’s Hero, the plot opens with a shocking murder and abduction on the streets of London that leads investigators to open a safe in Langley for the first time in ten years. A note directs them to a few key individuals, with three of the people on the list dead. The fourth on the list is Ben Koenig. He realizes that he knows the woman who carried out the killings. Ten years earlier, without being told why, he was tasked with helping her disappear. Far from being a deranged killer, she is the gatekeeper of a secret that could take down America, and for the safety of the country, she has been in hiding for years. Now Ben must find her. But because of his condition of not being able to feel fear, he doesn’t always know when he should walk away.
Jen, Ben’s handler, played more of a role in this book. She can compartmentalize, is tough, and resourceful. When I originally wrote it, she and Ben are friends. I changed it to give her a dark past and how she blames Ben from her fall from grace. They really do not like each other.”
These books are fast paced, sometimes violent, and engrossing. Because the first book, Fearless, is more personal readers want to take the journey along with Ben and his handler, Jen. The second book is more of a spy novel.
