Devil's Guard

Expected more out of this because of its high rating here. I liked the story, and there was a lot of information on ancient Germanic peoples. The action scenes were good for the most part. Personally, I couldn't get into the main bad guy as being the instrument behind Hitler. I would have expected someone more calm, cool and caculating, instead of one who flies off the handle and kills most of his subordinates. Heine was interesting to say the least, but the main plotline of the hijacked missiles wasn't portrayed as the most lethal of threats. Entertaining, but not what I was expecting.

Well firstly let me state I am dumfounded that the same author who produced #237 which I slated has produced this gem. This is sooooo good I am now hoping that Mark Ellis may consider writing another title in this series. The plot/story/conspiracy goes back 1,000 years in fact and directly refers to the end of the second world war and we pick up the story with the unearthing of a crate which has been buried for 50 years. hmm something is missing from the crate and the guy who is 90+ and in a wheelchair who we are introduced to ends up being one of the most astute/devious/bloodthirsty/cunning etc. (and he is a crack shot believe me) characters you have ever come across and it is on. (You will be stunned when you read who one of his kills was.....) The title picks up from there and you will be taken on a fantastic story where Mack continues on as usual but with original situations to face an original writing style and extremely good action scenes. Highly recommended reading in this series.

An exceptional novel. The action was very fast paced including the farm house scene between Heine and Mack. Ok a 90 year old villian is kind of like taking candy from a baby but still an excellent confrontation. Heine I never thought was going to be an interesting character. The start it was stated he was around 90 and a 90 year old interesting? Nope. Thought it would be the other two at the excavation to be main characters. Boy was I wrong. The oldest yet one of the more interesting. It was amazing people followed him but the young skinheads did it because it seemed like he was the personification of an idea they loved - Aryanism. A truly evil concept yet one these punks went to. Well plus the Order of Thule which had political/medical and business leaders involved in. I am not sure why Mack didn't just toss out the knife over the Atlantic and pretend he had it. I know it went embedded in Heine's chest but still I hope the knife was destroyed after. German political bureacracy - yuck. Same all over the world. Sure Mack goes into a soft probe and boom it goes hard. What did these bureacrats do? Say at least you got the bad guys? Nope. Say you broke all protocal. Yup. The hospital scene was a great action scene and a scene where things can go wrong very rapidly. I also liked the fact on how psychotic Heine was and how he really was Mack's best ally by getting rid of many of Mack's enemies. By getting rid of his own members of Thule this was also good seeing how people change with time and what was once embraced now seems idiotic and wrong. The members of Thule changed with the times either being practical or change of heart. Yet Heine never changed if he had he may have won. A 10. Read it.

A good action thriller by the Outlanders writer, Bolan tracks down a villain that was the mastermind behind Hitler and the Nazis. Bolan has dealt with getting shot at with all kinds of weapons, but in this book he almost gets microwaved to death! A truly scary and horrifying weapon. When the book kicks off with a very exciting chase through a jungle with a helicopter on his trail, I knew I was in for a great read. Plenty of action and a well thought out plot make this an enjoyable book.

This book was one of my favorite Executioner books. The mention of the Thule Order bought some historical realism to the story, thereby bringing Bolan more into the real world as he is supposed to be. The spiritual connection of Bolan to the DAG was also well done. Though Heine was fascinated with it it seems more fitting that America's quintessential warrior (Bolan)have a spiritual link to an artifact. The Hospital Battle scene was very good. It showed how Bolan's tactics indirectly reduce the odds in favor of law enforcment (i.e. the cops caught in the stand-off with the villians Bolan was fighting). I liked the idea of Bolan moving in alone to take down the villains in an exciting way. The dialogue was also superb. The words between bolan and the other characters reinforced (with style)how bolan looks at the situation and what his job is. I disagree with EricNY about Bolan's having every answer "annoying". I loved that particular thing about Bolan as it showed him having an expert's understanding of the situation that none of the other characters had. That's how a hero should be portrayed:wiser and more in control of the situation than the other characters. This story gets a strong 9!

Tight, authentic characterization and a well-written, original plot contribute to making "Devil's Guard" one of my favorite Executioner novels of all time. This is apparently the book that started GE's recent fascination with Bolan opposing neo-Nazi groups with occult overtones, but none of them matched this one in my opinion. The Order of Thule, based on a real organization and the belief Nazis were descendants of Aryan gods is presented very credibly. The Thulists come off as professional and intelligent adversaries. Heinrich Heine, the aged evil mastermind reminded me of Montgomery Burns for some reason, but that made him all the more enjoyable as the main villain. The touch of the metaphysical with Bolan's and Heine's spiritual connection to the ancient artifact, The Dag, was very well-handled and very original. The pace of this novel is headlong, tinted with violence and terror, but it's not without a sense of humor, particularly in the some the dialogue between Bolan and the heroine Ilona Wezhart. She was a welcome change from the usual damsel in distress, a German citizen who is half-black who the reader can sympathesize with as her country seems to turn more toward institutionalized racism. The action is fast and furious and Bolan has rarely been portrayed more maturely and driven. High-tech but believable gimmickry and hardboiled dialogue abound in this tour-de-force. The battle scene at the mental hospital were fantastic! "Devil's Guard" is full of action and colorful characters and real nail biting suspense, particularly during the climatic "countdown to destiny" at the end. Bolan's philosophy comes through very strongly in this book which was another thing I appreciated about it. Although he works with the US military and German government, what gets him involved is coming across a massacred village of Amazonian indians. And even so, he's not their yes-man...he steps on toes and even gets arrested by the German secret service. I don't know why Mark Ellis hasn't written any more Bolan books since this one, but I for one hope that he returns to Mack Bolan sometime in the future, either with an Executioner or better yet, a Stony Man novel. "Hellfire Trigger" and "Devil's Guard" shows he has an instinctive grasp of not only the character but how to write a compelling book.

Most books about modern-day Nazis or neo-Nazis tend to be crappy, but this one was very gripping and well-written. A good foe for Bolan to go up against is a measure of a good book in this series and you can't find a much better villian than the creep in this one.

A friend of mine (who just so happens to have written a few Executioner novels) recommended Devil's Guard to me as one of the best Executioners of the last few years and I have to agree with him. It really rocked...the bad guys were really bad and Heinrich Heine--whoo! That was one evil SOB. Then again I guess anyone who messes around with Nazis, black magic and nuclear weapons is bound to be evil. This was a read in one night kind of book and I hope to see more Bolan novels by this writer.

Devil's Guard : Masterfully written! a hide-and-seek game about Neo-Nazis and 'FATMAN' in peaceful rebuilding europe. The main charcter, evil genius heinrich heine is behide the scenes, that controls a Brotherhood of Doom, ready to unleash its evil 'FATMAN' plot on the world. The enemies in the book was as dirty as 'Group of Crack House Pimps'! every page was like weaving through thick blades of tall grass in Cobra country! and the main Cobra, was 'Heine', and he bit his own henchmen more then Bolan had ammo. Heine wins the wack-job of year award for sure! Could have been a true great archnemesis in a trilogy! This book scores a 9 because of the indepth science and history info, craftly intangled into a brilliant page-turning subplotting bolan novel.

What a good read! Couldn't put it down. I really liked the plot,and the action was non-stop. The Thulians made great villains.I'm really getting into the Bolans. I am new to reading them, and although this was only my sixth one, it was the best.

Books about Nazis and neo-Nazis are usually so redudant they're not worth reading but this was an exception, mainly because of the well-written storyline about Heine. To make such an old guy seem like a credible foe is no small feat and the author did a good job pulling it off. Good job.

I fairly new to the Bolan series and I just recently read Trigger Point and Iron Fist and saw references to this book in them. I have to say I liked Devil's Guard more than either one of those...this was one great, fast-moving and even scary novel. The Order of Thule was a truly formidable enemy and came across as really evil. As other reviewers of this book pointed out, Bolan really had his hands full with these guys. It was a very fast-moving story and Heine creeped me out like no other Bolan foe has ever done. Although I've only read about 10 Executioner novels and a Stony Man at this point, Devil's Guard is my favorite so far. I look forward to reading more by Mark Ellis.

Normally I have a problem with the so-called stone-cold, efficient villain who takes out so many of his own henchmen that the hero walks through the cracks in his organization and just blows him away. Heine was no such animal. The Order of Thule was about the toughest, meanest, hardest to kill group of thugs and bad guys I ever saw. Heine offed dudes it would have taken Bolan an entire novel to get to and clean out. At first, I thought that Heine was thinning his own herd unnessessarily, but then, I kept reading. The Executioner wasn't having his job made any easier with Heine taking out his own failures. And when it got to the end... the final battle between the Executioner, in his physical prime, and Heine, an old frail man in his 100's... I was still on the edge of my seat going "This guy is a tough sumbish." Woo.

This is one of the best I have read in a long, long time. In fact I more or less quit reading the newer ones because it seemed like they were all the same. If this is any indication of how good some of the newer ones are I'll be reading them a lot more. This book has the most evil villian I have ever seen, & even Bolan himself commented twice that he has never faced such an evil & ruthless man as is the villian in this book. I recommend this book for all Bolan fans. Definitely in my top ten!!

Another good entry from Ellis. I especially enjoyed this one, since it dealt with Germany, and real problems resurfacing there. I found the bad guys to be quite evil and dastardly and the story itself enticing - kept me interested, though it took me a couple weeks to get through this one. There was a bit of investigation and plenty of good action for my tastes. The last few lines from Heine were great. And it doesn't QUITE end on a dime like others. :)

I used to read all the Bolan books regularly, but fell out of the habit until the last year or so and started up again. I have to say that Devil's Guard is one of the best I've read since then. Lots of action and even history and the bad guys in this one are particularly despicable. It also seemed a little more intelligently written than usual and showed Bolan using his brains as well as his Desert Eagle.

I though this was better the average executioner book, i really liked the idea of bolan distroying a secret, ancient, nazi society and all the micro wave weapons were interesting also.

this was one of the best stories in the series to come along for a long time. The action scenes were intelligent, exciting, and intense, the writing was excellent and the plot about a former nazi was outstanding. One thing i liked about this book was that the ending was not ended on a dime like some authors tend to do, the last 50 pages or so kept me on the edge.

This was a pretty darn good book. I have always enjoyed Mack blowing away Neo-Nazis since they are the bottom of the barrel.

ONCE AGAIN, ANOTHER AWESOME RECENT BOOK TO COME OUT IN A LONG TIME. THIS MARK ELLIS GUY KNOWS HOW TO WRITE THEM. THE WHOLE PLOT ABOUT THE REAL POWER BEHIND HITLER DEFINATELY HIT THE MARK AND HEINE WAS ONE SADISTIC ENEMY. INSTEAD OF BOLAN HAVING EVERY ANSWER WHICH CAN SOMETIMES BE ANNOYING, YOU GET THE IMPRESSION THAT HE ALMOST COULD HAVE LOST THIS BATTLE AT TIMES. THE BAD GUYS WERE ALMOST SLICK ENOUGH TO GIVE HIM A RUN FOR HIS MONEY AND HE PRETTY MUCH MADE THINGS UP AS HE WENT ALONG.I CAN,T EVEN COMPARE THIS ONE TO ANY OTHER BOOK BECAUSE IT WAS THAT GOOD. THE CAR BOMB SCENE IS ONE OF MY FAVORITE PARTS. DEFINATELY A WINNER AND DEFINATELY KEEP WRITING THEM THIS WAY BECAUSE THESE NEWER ONES ARE ALMOST GIVING THE GREAT OLD BOOKS SOME SERIOUS COMPETITION AND THE SERIES IS REALLY PICKING UP AGAIN.

This is a good story and is to be recommended. The battle at the clinic is very tense and well written. The only scene that I found silly was when Bolan chased some of the Nazi thugs on a tractor. Otherwise it is a good entry.