Onyx reviews: The Man Who Fought Alone by Stephen R. Donaldson

Stephen R. Donaldson has a reputation for creating some of the orneriest, most frustrating protagonists in modern fiction. The epitome of this is the antihero of his fantasy series The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant, who stubbornly and consistently bypassed situations where a word on his part would have improved a situation dramatically.

Mick Axbrewder, the protagonist of Donaldson's mystery series—the first three books appeared under the pseudonym Reed Stephens—is only slightly less frustrating than Covenant. The cross Axbrewder (Brew to his friends) bears is the fact that years ago, while drunk, he accidentally shot and killed his younger brother, an on-duty cop. Negligent homicide, they called it, costing him his private investigator's license.

Brew and his partner, Ginny Fistoulari, have decamped from Puerta del Sol to the relentlessly hot city of Carner, probably in New Mexico. Brew recently killed one of El Senor's thugs with his bare hands after the crime lord's hired gun shot Brew in the stomach. El Senor, needless to say, was not amused, which is why the partners have moved.

Things aren't going smoothly between Ginny and Brew. Former lovers, their relationship deteriorated after the El Senor fiasco, during which Ginny lost a hand. In their new surroundings, they are barely civil to each other. Ginny finds a new job, leaving the recovering Brew to fend for himself.

Brew's dark anger infuses everything. As he drives through Carner, a city in which he seems to be perpetually lost, he describes his surroundings. "That section of Carner was so comfortless and artificial, so full of buildings pretending they weren't identical to each other, that it should've ceased to exist as soon as the sun went down." His attitude taints everything he observes. If it were lighter in tone, it might be considered banter. Instead, it's the reflection of his perpetually foul mood.

Mick is hired as supplemental security for a major martial arts competition. One of the centerpiece displays at the event is a set of "chops," antique Chinese artifacts that may or may not be genuine. Mick can't just do his job—he noses around, earning the ill will of virtually everyone he encounters. He's abrasive. He kicks sand in people's faces to see how they react.

This doesn't make him the ideal person to handle the delicate balance that is the International Association of Martial Artists. Composed of Chinese, Japanese and Korean factions, the IAMA is a powder keg of inscrutable ethnic distrust. Once his simple security job turns into a murder investigation, Brew becomes a loose cannon, an equal opportunity offender.

Brew does manage to find someone who likes him, the beautiful and aggressive Deborah Messinger. He's so captivated by her he can barely think straight in her presence. He also has the annoying tendency of having unmotivated prophecies of doom that are invariably validated.

If readers can get past the brooding protagonist, Donaldson tells an interesting but flawed story. The plot occasionally gets lost in mini-lectures about esoteric details of martial arts. Donaldson also doesn't hide the identity of the murderer very well, although Brew professes surprise when he works it out.

For all this, it's hard to fault such a visceral depiction of a character struggling to regain some modicum of self-esteem. Brew gets under the reader's skin—it takes skill for an author to pull that off—and the beatings Brew receives from others are only light dustings compared to the way he beats himself up.