hmm it's okay just !!!
The plot is fantastic, terrorists poisoning the water supply with radiactive material.
Then MULTIPLE characters are introduced some never to be heard of again (I'm still wondering?).
Force 90 is formed. WHY ???
The Iraq President contacts the US President and requests this ??????????????
Force 90 does the job ??
WHY ????
crap just filler for the book.
BUT
if you are reading these books in order ?
it's okay have read better but have read worse.
my two bobs worth..........
What should I say about this book? If I had written this review after the first 120 pages or so, I would have written WOW...........but sadly this changed as the book progressed. It has such a potential with a great plot and interesting story line as there were a few interesting characters with different motives running around but after an explosive start and great pace of the book it kind of thinned out in the end leaving several loose ends hanging there without further explaining them. This along with the fact that sometimes the pace was too fast for the storyline makes this book in the end just another average Bolan book.
The combination of the team members of Force 90 was very strange as one though have thought it would be more affective to have more combat trained members in that team or even drop a call to the Able Team or Phoenix Force.
A lot of characters are introduced in this book and some of them just disappear without further explaining their fate in the end which is sad as some characters were build up early in the book quite nicely making them interesting like for example the federal agent Shondor was a cool side kick and really spiced up the book.
Sadly, the book didn´t quite managed to keep the good and interesting plot to the end. Oh, what a shame!!! (2004)
I got the impression that this book was a SuperBolan compressed into a regular size story. In addition to the usual huge cast of characters found in a Furst novel, there was more globetrotting in this book than I think I've ever read in any Bolan book before. Bolan was everywhere, flying from place to place, in Europe, in America, sometimes in two different place on the same page. Same for the villains. One page they're in America, next in another state or country, France, Germany, Egypt , Syria, or wherever. Sometimes it seemed rediculous to have a paragraph where Bolan and Brognola are meeting somewhere, then later they meet in another part of the world. It didn't seem as though Brognola needed to physicly be there. Bolan and Brognola talked on the phone several times too, they could have just done that more.
The plot is basicly the villains planning to get what they want by poisoning rivers with radioactive substance, and hoping the US would meet their demands or the poisoning would continue. Pretty scary stuff, but the plot got a little redundant by the end of the book. The story kind of wandered a lot. But despite this book being rather un-executionerlike in many ways, it was still entertaining, had enough action, I liked it, but it could have been so much better.
It would have made a good SuperBolan, with the scenes more fleshed out.
One odd thing was Bolan's "force 90" group he put together, just didn't seem sensible to get a group of people together from different countries for his allies at the end, he could have used Able Team, or even some or all of Phoenix Force instead.
Oh, how I wanted to like this book! The plot was fantastic -- terrorists have been aquiring low level radioactive isotopes. While these are not bomb-making quality, they are still enough to cause damage and poison thousands or millions. In fact, the opening attack shows terrorists taking out innocents, and also killing many emergency personnel who are the first to respond. If that plot doesn't touch a nerve then you must have been in a cave for the past year.
But the writing was so bad. Names are dropped left and right. I understand that an international terrorist ring probably has 20 or 30 members, but do we need to know them all personally? It was tough to keep up with who's who without a crib sheet.
But even worse was Bolan finding a new ally, and then forming a new anti-terroist unit, "Force 90". It was ridiculous and absurd that as terrorists are plotting the radiactive nightmare, Bolan is training these yahoos on the use of the H&K G-11 assault rifle.
And don't even get me started on the Iraqi president calling on the US president to invite Force 90 to launch an attack in Iraq. Way too far out there.
I'm still giving this one 4 stars because of the great plot, but the writing is seriously lacking in this one. "Direct Hit" is a great disappointment that did not live up to its expectations.
