Shock Tactic

"Loggers! Logging! If the lumberjacks can't chop down virgin forest then house prices will rise and we'll all be doomed!" A bit of an exaggeration but that is the hook that Brognola uses to get Bolan in on the act. A "green" terrorist group intends to get up to all sort of hairbrained things that don't really make sense and Bolan needs to stop them. The terrorists could have been replaced by Arabs of the week and it wouldn't have made any difference to the story. And boy is the story dated and out of touch. Bolan is worried about the loggers and chemical companies and how will they make enough profit. He is saddled with an FBI lady who is so cardboard I have already forgotten her name. Bolan blunders from gunfight to gunfight relying on coincidences such as local newspaper reports to give him clues. Then he has a stupid ride on the outside of the stolen submarine as it dives deep and later comes back up with no hint of the bends. There are a lot of things I could say about this book including the authors obsession with the name Garth and how he reuses the name for villains in later books but why bother. I did not like this book at all. Not one bit, even thou I stuck with it until the end. "Won't somebody think of the loggers!?"

This book kept me entertained from cover to cover. Bolan's enemy this time is an eco-terrorist, Jason Creed, who cares for the environment but not a bit for people. What I really liked about the villains was there were a countable number of bad guys, each having a purpose for being part of the villain's plans. For a supersized Bolan adventure, I was pleased the author made this a viable approach to the story. Too many larger books, even the smaller Executioner adventures, have an unbelievable mass production of cardboard badguys that pop up just long enough for Bolan to blow them away. Bolan starts in Portland, thwarting one leg of Creed's three prong terrorist attacks. Nothing too special, but decent action. Then it is all the way to the east coast in New Jersey, for the second part. I liked the action at the chemical plant, one of my favorite parts of the book. Phase three is Creed's own master strike in California. Here Bolan must race against time and still find a way to track down what and where the terrorist is going to do. Bolan's skills are put to the test, dealing with a guy wearing night vision goggles, tracking a sub, surviving an underwater ride with no wetsuit, and dealing with all kinds of stuff like that. The balance between what the badguys were doing and what Bolan and his allies were doing was just right. A solid supersized Bolan adventure that was original and enjoyable.

Well this authors first Super Bolan entry and a fine effort it is. Eco terrorism is the subject which is a bit of a refreshing original idea and indeed include some good characters and the title stacks up well on top add some fine action scenes and this is a very good read. Unfortunately there is an extreme bias against this author from a large section of members of this site regarding a certain chapter of a title Lockdown which is critically out of character for the big guy. Whilst I totally agree with sentiments regarding this chapter I am still struggling as to whether he actually wrote that chapter or not as in many titles including this one the author displays a strong knowledge of the character hence my failure to lodge a review on that title. For what it is worth this is a very good read as has been the case with many of his Executioner titles and I think you would enjoy this one if you give it a go.

A so-so entry into the Super Bolan series. Nothing too spectacular about this one.