Shadow Target

The title makes sense regarding the interesting situation Bolan has to begin this mission. Tasked with taking out a Russian mafia figure that is making deals with the mafia in the United States, this makes this a classic mafia story with a new twist. Bolan's target is a mystery to the soldier as plastic surgery has modified his face so that Bolan must figure out how to identify the villain before he can get his mission started. Mostly a lone wolf adventure, not even Grimaldi is mentioned in this book, as Bolan moves around several locations taking out the mob, Russian or otherwise. A surprise ally joins him for a time, and soon a method is discovered to find out the villain's identity. From there the action heats up and I really enjoyed the final pages with an excellent chase scene to cap the adventure. I would have rated this book higher, but I thought the pacing dragged in some places with a little too much of the narrative devoted to the thoughts of every main character of the factions involved. All said and done, this is a classic Executioner style that was enjoyable, with an interesting start and an exciting ending.

On first picking up this title I looked to see who the author was and on seeing it was Mike Newton nightmares of the last seven or eight of his titles I have read flashed through my head. But surprise surprise it starts off pretty good and the storyline is mostly original even if a bit far fetched. A Russian mob boss turns evidence against a mafia don and is rewarded with a plastic surgery face job and a new identity and life by the US government in return. The Russian has other ideas though and through his hit squad takes out the American agents guarding him and takes off. The Russian has made some sort of agreement with some of the more powerful mafia dons to form an alliance but for what purpose and what inducements he made to the dons to agree is perhaps going to be explained in the rewrite of this title. The title then seems to stall as Mack runs around with the assistance of a covert Russian agent who has also been sent to America to take out the Russian don. So what about the standard inclusions in a Mike Newton book? 1) Rattle the cages and get the opposition fighting amongst themselves. sigh yep. 2) The sniper scene. sigh yep but from one hundred yards whilst squatting in a tree not from a rooftop this time. 3) The obligatory hostaged female. sigh yep but in reverse as Mack and his partner actually have her and have to protect her from the bad guys who come to take her. The book does in fact read okay but I thought it was pretty much middle of the road stuff I have read vastly better from Mike Newton but I have read a LOT worse.

Shadow Target was not a bad case for Mack. I like the way this was tied to his intermittent cases against the Mafia. Seems like most of his cases are against terrorists. It was nice to see the Mafia war get tied into the Terrorist War. The supporting Russian character Dimi Petrov was good, but the way he was brought into the story was abrupt. The way he was killed , it seemed like Mack didn't give a hoot about him as the Big Guy doesn't get pissed and sweat to avenge a comrade in arms , etc. As for Justine Palmer, it was hard to figure out , okay , is she a victim or a villian? Seems she got off too easy for my taste, especially since she got Petrov killed. And finally, I would have liked to see some dialogue between Mack and the villian, Baklanov. When Mack caps him, I wonder if Mack even knew he it was. Still,there was action through out, and pretty good too. I'd recommend this , no problem!

A decent entry into the series with a lot of good action in it. My only problem with this one is when all the mafia bosses are either talking or thinking about how the America mafia has been decimated over the years no seems to remember Mack Bolan waging a war on them.

I am usually a fan of Newton, but thank goodness this wasnot one of the first of his I read. I agree that it had potential, but just did not live up to Newton's other books. Dissapointing, but not every book in the series can be wonderful.

I'm a fan of Mike Newton's work, but this was not one of his better novels. It had the feel of wanting to be a good, knockout, old-style Mafia novel...but somewhere along the way, it lost something. The action is fairly sparse, and a lot of time is spent in narrative. I found myself skimming through just to find the action scenes. Petrov wasn't someone I cared about, and Baklanov (the Russian mobster) was so remote as a character through most of the book he could've been left out entirely. Ugh. If the time it takes me to read a Bolan novel is any indication of how well I like it, this one took nearly a month (my average is about an hour), and I finished it only because I kept hoping it got better at the end.