Assault

Before 1990 Mike Newton had written some original Bolan stories, but around this period he must have realised that writing cookie cutter novels was much easier. In Assault we have the beginnings of the cut and paste that would serve the writer well for the next twenty five years plus. No sniper scene shooting the telephone but the girl does get kidnapped and Bolan does rattle cages and climb the ladder. And it started out so promising as well, with Bolan going under cover. Unfortunately there was no tension in these scenes, and I must confess I lost track of which villain was which in this little drugs cabal. And there was so much padding that I suspect this is really only a regular Executioner expanded. All in all a very dull, repetitive and slow read.

Well I gotta say Mike Newton has written some of the all time classics in these series and is a superb writer especially with Mafia stories. He has currently written I think 93 titles in the combined series but really the count should be around 70. Why? simply Mr. Newton has a very bad habit of cut and paste with his work and truly I reckon I have read this title on about 20 occasions now with the locations and character names changed to protect the already published. I am not going to rant and rave here I've done that previously on this subject. Enough to say that if you have read none or very little of this authors work I am sure you would enjoy this title. Unfortunately if you have read a lot of his work don't bother you have already read this many times before.

And what an assault it was. The first half of the story deals with Bolan's blitz in New York, and on to cyprus for a beatdown there. The second half takes place in the Bekaa valley in the Syria/Lebenon area. This second phase deals largely with introducing a leader of a band of rebels, and Bolan's war gets help from these rebels for the final assaults there. One nitpick I had with this part of the story was the scenes involving the rebel camp were to similar to the same found in Hatian Hit. Even the helecopter attack on the camp was almost identical. The plot was kind of simple also, with Bolan knowing who to hit and where they were from the beginning, and the novel centered mainly on taking out the bad guys in one blitz after the other, hence the book's title. However, the action scenes are great, and easy to follow, Bolan in his classic attack mode. This book is not Newton's best by far, if it was a smaller book maybe a 7, but it read well for a 350 pager, crammed with great action and adventure. And well, I'm a Newton junkie anyway. Flesh and Blood was a better Newton Superbolan but I'm still giving Assault an 8.

Bolan is tipped off that two Iranian terrorists have made it to America. He takes them out, but is concerned as to why they are meeting with the NYC mafia drug czar. Some investigation at Stony Man tips him off that a new drug for terror pipeline is opening, and Bolan must smash this new threat to America. A good book but not a great book. There is a good action scene at the beginning of the book when Bolan face the terrorists, but then quite a lull as he drives to Stony Man farm, gets dossiers on the villians, and heads off to the Middle East. Grimaldi is included in this mission but very underused -- he just shows up in the last 25 pages to bail out the big guy. The cartel that Bolan is up against islarge, but the members are not well-defined. After Bolan wipes out half of the drug dealers, there is still confusion over who is left and what their little "quirk" is. Reading it was tough -- it was like , "Didn't Bolan kill the Shiite last chapter? Oh wait, that was the Lebanese grower who doesn't like to fly." Good action in the last 100 pages, but the book would have been better with better pacing, spreading the action out over the whole book instead of concentrating so much at the end.

A real action packed entry from Newton. In my opinion, this was one of the last real good SB's until Jungle Law.