Defense Breach

I really liked the plot with this one imagining hundreds of Stinger missiles being fired into an American Aircraft Carrier by Arab terrorists a sitting duck with it's defence systems disabled unable to protect itself. Believable storyline then proceeds where some of the programmers of the defence shield software are disgruntled and leave. hmm problems immediately when three of the four are murdered and the fourth is on the run. The title was really going well but seemed to fall away quickly towards the end. Liked it a lot but this one probably would have been a much better read released in one of the longer versions of these series. You could do worse than read this one I reckon.

A couple of firsts for me with this title, it is the first of the new shorter format novels and the first Peter Spring that I have read. Where to start....hmmm, well the plot is resonably okay, Arab terrorists want to attack US carriers with stinger missles, and disable the electronic defeses with a stolen program. I must really question the motivations of the software engineers, though. 'Oh, nobody likes us in our company so rather than quit and go work somewhere else, we'll steal the codes, give it to terrorists and let them kill thousands of sailors; there that will make our company sorry that they were mean to us!' I liked Peter Spring's flowery description and way of writing, I will definately have to read Black Death Rising which is sitting on my book shelf, however the story really suffers in the new short format. I felt that Peter must have delivered his manuscript only to be told to remove 15,000 words, then another 5,000 were removed in the editing dept. I must agree with the other reviews, the 'John Woo' stuff became tiresome very quickly. Bolan was constantly throwing himself in slow motion through the air whilst firing his full auto Desert Eagle and Beretta. I always assumed that one hit from a Desert Eagle would blow the bad guy away leaving only his smoking shoes. Not so here, Bolan shoots his target three times with the Eagle whilst in flight! Wow! And how does one reload when both hands are filled with pistols? I can only image that Bolan has been watching Lara Croft movies... And on a tiny, tiny nitpicking note, modern warships no longer have conning towers, and the Iranian navy most certainly does not have a battleship.

The first book I read by this new author and it was surprisingly good. I liked the plot of terrorists threatening to bypass the defense system for our carrier battle group. There was plenty of action with the terrorists and the mob. The finale was tense, although one thing that bugged me was Bolan never used a machine gun the entire book. He was stuck with his two main pistols, and when engaging a much larger force, you might expect anyone to be realistically outgunned. Aside from that pet peeve, it was still a good read.

This was the most disappointing executioner I've read so far. It's only the 4th one I've read. It started out pretty good, but then it just got kind of boring over time. I thought the plot had potential to be really good, but I don't know it just ended up falling short. As the other reviewer stated, he only uses the Beretta and desert eagle throughout the whole book and almost nothing else. Just disappointing.

I like that it wasn't about the end of the world, or some giant Global Terrorist Holocaust, but about stopping an attack on a single target. It was a good concept, and I usually like those ideas better. But my main complaint was already noted, he drops into hostile territory to assault an Unknown number of terrorists, hes hoping for around 24, and he only brings his Desert Eagle and a Beretta ? He had all the weapons in the world to choose from, plus he has to knock out some important equipment, so he brings some highly volatile explosive rounds ( described in depth, in this and this authors last entry) so that was a bit of a let down. Average entry. Eh Kay.

Started out strong, but devolved into a James Bond imitation. Breaking point for me was during a ludicrous escape from a Vegas hotel. Brognola is dressed impeccably for some reason. He’s Mr. Exposition in this one. Bolan also never upgrades his weapons. He runs around the novel two-fisting his Beretta and the Desert Eagle, even when pitted against armed terrorist and/or mafia camps. Temporarily without a Beretta, he runs around with a PPK and a Desert Eagle, two-fisting. I liked the author’s first installment, but I’m coloring this one underwhelming. First of the slimmed down Executioner novels. Other than a reprint, this would be the first 192-page Executioner since Blood Heat Zero published in ’86. It also had a snowy cover.