Doug

Tooth and Claw. <groan> What the hell do I say about this book? Several words come to mind but I've sworn I won't use them. And so this may be a very short review. The action here is again marred by the author's enduring habit of having Phoenix Force lose their firearms and have to resort to various -fu's and -jitsu's. There is even some sambo here in case you're feeling the need for some. To be fair, there is one pretty good bit of action early on when Gary Manning, unarmed on his trip to the local grocery store, is attacked by a hit squad. That was good writing with Manning's lack of a firearm not feeling forced. But all that goodwill was squandered a few chapters later when Encizo gave up his guns to engage in a knife fight with an enemy because of some taunting. "Why not just shoot the silly bastard?" you might ask. Good question. Much of this action seems to have been written by Austin Powers and I really expect that eventually there will be much use of the "Judo Chop!" The secondary characters here are almost all ridiculous caricatures and clowns. One of the Russians is well done and memorable. It really stands out here because even the members of Phoenix Force seem to suffer from one-liner syndrome. Rafael and Calvin are particularly bad here and seem like Shaggy and Scooby more often than not. Perhaps this book was reworked from something originally submitted to Mad Magazine. The whole tone of this one is so off key that I couldn't bear to read more than a few chapters at a time. 2 stars for this one only because of the good action with Manning attacked in chapters 5 and 6. The rest of this stinker rates a big fat goose egg.

Let me sing the praises of Missouri Deathwatch, an actual, real, honest to goodness Mack Bolan adventure. Not just a book with Mack Bolan in it. Oh, no. This is a clear the decks, exercise the guns, burn some powder adventure with Mack on a mission to stop the New York families from taking over the St. Louis territory. Yeah, it was kind of done before by Don Pendleton way back in his prime. And, yeah, OK, it has a lot of similarities with this author's "Shock Waves" (and "Blood Dues" for that matter.) I don't care. This is an entertaining and exciting chapter in the Executioner's story. Similarities? Yeah, of course: why would Mack change tactics that work? Great action scenes abound and some actual suspense. Particularly good is the scene where Bolan's attempt to pull off his Black Ace impersonation in the heart of goomba-land is thwarted. He gets out but it seems for just a couple paragraphs like it isn't a sure thing. Nicely done. And a very well done sniper attack was a good return to one of Mack's most potent tactics. The supporting characters are pretty well done with the old fool Giamba being maybe the least of them. But he serves his purpose as do the rest of the mobsters: they keep Bolan's lead from littering the landscape. Maybe I'm thinking this is a better book than it really is because of the books in recent memory. The last Executioner book, Hammerhead Reef was pretty damn lame and I just finished reading the sensationally bad Phoenix Farce adventure, Tooth and Claw. <shudder> So maybe Missouri Deathwatch looks better because of its surroundings. I was thinking this might be a 9 star book but Don Pendleton's original story was a 9 and this one didn't quite get there for me. So 8 stars it has to be. Try this one and let's hear what you think.

In a tale from the soldier's days in Vietnam, "Dirty War" follows Mack Bolan's Sniper Team Able through some action packed missions against an evil NVA major. This story is wrapped inside a short narrative about the Executioner hitting the hardsite home that was the the target of the Death Squad all those years before. This book is action piled on more action but with some nice sections of Mack's thinking about the war and his place in the world. Lots of familiar faces join Mack and his Death Squad partners. The Death Squad guys themselves aren't such caricatures here as I originally thought they were. The only point that really bothered me about this was the timing of the end and how it would fit continuity with the first stories. If Mack's Death Squad were all in Vietnam when he got the news about his family tragedy, how could they all be there to help him out a couple weeks later when he hit L.A.? Whatever, this one rates 8 stars for action, action and action.

Able Team is on a classic "blow up the missile installation" mission in Honduras. On the way they tangle with a warehouse full of thugs and discover that somebody on the inside of the mission wants them dead. This story is bookended by enough text to make it a flashback so it fits into series continuity of Lyons being captured in the previous story. This would be pretty much straight Able Team except for the weird stuff. Gadgets has been re-imagined as some kind of psychic and even Lyons seems to be feeling the magic powers of some voodoo shrine. Lyons gets distracted talking to an ancient skull and seems to have some crazy kind of ideas about luck. All the supernatural stuff just seems very out of place in Mack Bolan's world. The story itself is straight ahead and not awful but there is too much wasted with the uninteresting subplot of the betrayal. The traitor's motives was. . . what exactly? I couldn't tell. And the whole thing really didn't make any sense. Those pages would have been put to better use with another action scene. And the same goes for the mumbo-jumbo stuff. A firefight would have been more satisfying and fit better into the story. And Able Team using just basic Government Colts and M-16s seems somehow unsatisfying. 6 stars for this one. If the subplot and supernatural stuff had been replaced by a couple more action scenes this one could have been an 8 star book. Maybe even 9.

This is a very uneven book. Some of the action is pretty good while other bits are below average. The supporting characters are uninteresting with maybe one exception who only lasts a couple chapters. Much of this book is given over to a plodding narrative as Bolan unravels the mystery. The mystery isn't worth unravelling and the solution is based on wild assumptions of the only possible explanation of this or that fact. Too much of the rest of the book is wasted on a subplot about a deadly KGB assassain after Bolan. This assassain is more annoying than deadly and doesn't provide much of interest. For some reason in this book the Executioner goes around introducing himself to all kinds of people as Mack Bolan, seemingly unconcerned about his identity being so widely known. Add to that the strange weaponry used by Bolan in this one and it's almost like an entirely different character is filling in while Mack is on vacation. 4 stars for this unsatisfying yarn.

The lads of Phoenix Force are on the trail of TRIO again, that laughably inept, overdressed and under-gunned group from a previous book. "The elaborate props and costumes used and worn by TRIO's overlords might have seemed ludicrous". Boy howdy. The plot here is paper thin and won't bear even the slightest examination since it isn't up to the standards of the Wishbone children's books. The villains are either cartoonishly silly or forgettable. They are there to provide targets for Phoenix Force and they do that very well. The action is better than usual for this series lately and the butterfingered boys from Stony Man mostly manage to hang onto their firearms this time around. Unfortunately the action scenes are hampered by the author's insistence on having the good guys deliver terrible puns and one-liners after nearly every kill. Groans will be uttered. One very nicely done supporting character, Mahmud, makes a good low powered ally and adds some nice backstory to McCarter. He alone lifts this book from four to five stars.

"Shock Waves" covers one 24 hour period in the hellgrounds with Mack Bolan as he moves to disrupt a mafia meeting aimed at consolidating all their dirty power under a new leader. Complicating matters are some good guys caught on the inside and marked for death by the mob. This book was a great pleasure to read. Excellent action and great characters in a pressure cooker of a story. I especially enjoyed the return to classic Bolan tactics. Hal is great in this one as are all the supporting characters but it's the Executioner himself who really made me enjoy this book. Bolan hasn't been so completely "right" for about 40 books. The action scenes are crackling with power and all the other pages of this story build tension and flesh out characters. I don't think I could find any difference between this book and any of Don Pendleton's best mafia war stories. And if that isn't worth 10 stars I don't know what is!

You might expect that an Able Team book from the Able Team series would have the Able Team in it. Sadly, that is not the case in "Ironman". Pol and Gadgets make only the briefest of appearances as Lyons remembers them ribbing him about taking his vacation in Guatemala. I've become accustomed to most books in this series being written as "Carl Lyons and Two Other Guys" but this is ridiculous. Lyons has left the states on a vacation to visit Nate from the earlier book, "Warlord of Azatlan", and his family. Of course the vacation is doomed as Lyons and his hosts have to fight and flee from the Unomundo crowd. That would be a decent plot idea but the author takes his time getting to any action. Everything in the first half of this book, and a good portion of the second half, is travelogue. Nothing wrong with travelogues but since this is supposed to be an action series I have to wonder what they were doing. Lyons spends a lot of time musing and since Lyons isn't nearly as interesting as Mack Bolan, the glimpses into his mind aren't nearly as interesting. More like a junior varsity version of Mack's thoughts. There is a masterfully good 30 pages of crackling action writing in the last 40 pages of the book. Very good stuff and easily up to the series standards. If the author had stuck another 60 pages of that kind of excitement in the first 150 pages this could have easily been a 7 or 8 star book. But instead the author spent a page and a half talking about Lyons' hand in contact with a milk-spurting breast and and eleven more following Lyons walking along a road and throwing rocks at dogs. As it is I give this one 4 stars for those last 40 pages.

In this very poor story the Executioner is in France to stop a wave of terror violence orchestrated by a rich family to destabilize french society. The entire book just felt wrong for a Bolan adventure. One annoying thing was the ease with which Bolan could be ambushed. Either the villains had minions stationed at every corner and parking lot in France or they had a crystal ball. Every character in this book knew more than Bolan about what was going on and about the tactical situation. Another sore spot was the amazing amount of equipment lugged around by Bolan everywhere he went. Whenever the author wanted him to have something he just pulled it out of his pocket. Insulated pliers, rubber gloves, magnesium ribbon, etc. The Executioner's pockets must be the size of flour sacks. It's a sloppy way for an author to write his protagonist out of a jam. It's possible that the author didn't know the Bolan character very well. Bolan is presented as the kind of "wild assed warrior" that Don Pendleton took such great pains to avoid him being. He never stops to recon when he can just walk right up to the front door of the bad guy's house. There is plenty of action here because Bolan walks into more trouble than even a slightly cautious hero should find. Most of the action is contrived and not very satisfying. I could go on about this stinker but I just don't have the heart for it. 3 stars for some decent action when Bolan is chased by KGB goons and for the cool scene in the caves.

The butterfingered lads of Phoenix Force travel to India to thwart a revival of the murderous thugee cult. This is a better book than most of the preceding ones in this series. The villains and the plot are both good, the pacing is OK without too much bogging down and the action is frequent and entertaining if you can ignore the unfortunate habit of every member of Fumble Force to drop their firearms during every encounter with the enemy. This strange misfortune might have been an exciting addition to the action once. Perhaps even once every book. But this author has written this same tired cliche into every action scene of every book in the series for so long now that the main tension in these scenes comes not from the action but from waiting to see how each clumsy member of the team will be disarmed. But even when the heroes have their weapons they inexplicably choose to shoot the horde of attacking stranglers in the legs. It seems silly for them to worry about it being unsporting to shoot murderers. The author continues has effort to display his knowledge of ancient exotic weapons by arming his villains with a "lathi stick", a "vajra-musti knuckleduster" and a "Bundi dagger". This desire to show off his arcane knowledge might explain why his heroes have so much trouble holding onto their weapons. A band of villains armed with ancient weapons wouldn't pose a great threat to a team armed with modern automatic weapons. The action and interesting villains, the plot and pacing are actually very good here. This is a 7 star book.

The Executioner has gone to Portland to clear out the local mob and their loansharking operations. After he tears into them he finds that the local mob has a shipment of illegal weapons coming in. Bolan is good here as he uses his old methods of hitting the mob instead of reacting to some imminent threat. He hits from long range and he works in close. Even when he doesn't have time to recon and plan his action on target is well done and interesting. I've been critical of the author's handling of action scenes in the past but for the most part these are very satisfying. The story moves along with brisk pacing and holds the reader's interest. Johnny Bolan is on hand as support and research help for Mack. All the characters here are handled well, including Johnny. Mack is also good here except for some weird musings about the "Council of Kings" in Chapter 4 that seems like some kind of marketing for the various Gold Eagle series. The story is short and the last 35 pages of the book are devoted to a sort of flashback story Mack tells Johnny about his encounter in Vietnam with the "Council of Kings". The story itself isn't too bad but the preachy sentimental bleating about buddies and evil war profits rings hollow. 7 stars is the verdict.

Able Team goes to Sri Lanka to intercept a stolen shipment of American technology before it can be sold to the soviets. They have a Sri Lankan officer along as liason but may when they discover their secret mission is not so secret they may not be able to trust him. With the villain's goons out to stop Able they are more defensive than offensive in this story. That's not necessarily a bad thing but the action is a bit slow to develop here with only a single shot from Lyons' Colt Python prior to chapter 12. Even when the action catches up to Able Team it remains kind of sparse. And the final assault of Able to destroy the stolen tech is light on bang and not much of a climax. The story itself is good and the author paces things well despite the lack of things going boom. Able is handled well and for once the three are all pretty well used in the story. The supporting officer is interesting and there is some real fun had with the Able members as fish out of water in the strange country. This is good enough to rate 8 stars. With more action it would have been 9.

I have to admit that I like this book much more than I thought I would. From the cover illustration I really expected a very silly story. In fact I couldn't keep thoughts of G8 and his Battle Aces from my mind. And while a G8 story is a fine thing in the world of G8, it wouldn't be correct in the world of the Executioner. But I needn't have worried because this book kept the silly stuff to a minimum and delivered some very good action with brisk pacing and tension. Able Team is here as well as Lao Ti from a previous Able Team book. Able and Lao Ti both have some exciting action and work well here except the lady seems a bit too formidable for a supporting character. Grimaldi is on hand as well and he actually does more than just fly this time out. Good use of him as well. The action is generally very good though things get a bit confused at the end when the final huge battle has too many factions doing too many things to make sense of. Even the use of the biplane as depicted on the cover makes a kind of story sense and that air battle is done well. The plot moves things along with Bolan rescuing Grimaldi from a Russian air base providing the first objective and then Able's search for Lao Ti giving impetus to the second half of the book. The plot point about the defector was more of an excuse to get Able and Bolan on opposing sides and not very interesting on its own. My biggest problem with the book was the lack of Bolan. Once the big guy rescues Grimaldi and gets him across the border he disappears for a long time while Able and Lao Ti take center stage. I like Able Team but in an Executioner story I want the Executioner to have the majority of the action. So even though the action and pacing are good I'm only awarding seven stars here.

When smugglers kill Coast Guard sailors off the California coast, Phoenix Force comes to San Francisco looking for answers and hoping to kick some butt. Their enemies here include the MERGE, the new super criminal organization that was the threat from the last book, and TRIO, an oriental version of the same idea. TRIO is moving into Baghdad by the bay and wiping out MERGE as they go. That synopsis makes the story seem more interesting than it actually is. The plot is OK but could be summarized in one short paragraph. Phoenix Force moves from point to point getting closer to the final showdown when they move against the headquarters of TRIO. The Phoenix Force regulars are OK if a bit flat here. Nothing really distinguishes them and anyone not already familiar with the team might think they were interchangeable. The villains are pretty ordinary for all of the ethnic oddities the author lavishes on them. John Trent, an ally in the last half of the book, isn't too bad. The action here is frequent and frenetic and some of it is not too bad. The members of Phoenix Force don't seem to have quite as much trouble holding onto their firearms here as they have in this author's previous books although this is still something of a problem for them. In fact, probably the only reason Phoenix is allowed to keep hold of their guns is because the author has so many other opportunities to sprinkle oriental martial arts into the story. In the best circumstances this has been a problem for this author but with a criminal band of asian tough guys, a ninja ally and so much action in Chinatown he has thrown off all restraint and given himself over to temptation with giddy abandon. His characters fling throwing stars and hatchets merrily about, rush into combat armed with every ancient asian weapon he can think of and just in general give the author license to display his vocabulary of asian martial arts words. Perhaps he has "The Big Book of Martial Arts" at home or the complete works of Bruce Tegner. Whatever the reason, it has been apparent for several books now that this writer would much prefer to be writing martial arts tales than modern action stories. There is a reason people today use firearms instead of ancient weapons. To be blunt, firearms are more lethal and efficient. Having gun-toting heroes threatened by folks waving sticks and sharp novelties strains credulity. This book manages to deliver enough decent action to rate 5 stars in spite of the overuse of chop-socky. I just hope the author got it out of his system.

The Executioner is on a rampage through the Hollywood sin palaces of the mafia in a search for the daughter of a politician. The girl has been pulled into the sex industry underworld and the mob wants to use her to control her father in the U.S. Senate. Bolan has some help in this book from Johnny, who does very well as a junior partner. A Los Angeles police captain returns from the early days and The Executioner meets a couple new allies among the lost youngsters in Hollywood. Mack and Johnny and the other characters are all interesting people in their own ways. Even the bad guys seem alive. Great action here from Chapter 1 through to the last page, well written and never letting up for very long. The plot works well and the story is told in a way that maintains tension in the search for the missing girl and the fates of the other characters. Bolan takes on the mob with his patented brand of blitzing to shake answers out of the local family. In the process he turns the mafia against one another and takes out other associated lowlifes. In a case of weird continuity, Bolan reprises a trick from a car chase in the previous book (#76- Teheran Wipeout, by a different author) when he turns off his lights, then flips them on quickly to fool the pursuers into thinking he's hit his breaks. It was a lame trick in the earlier book and it doesn't get any better here but both times it has paid off big for Bolan. This was a great tale that brought back the feel of the early days of The Executioner's campaign, and the added element of having Johnny Bolan on board helps make this a story wothy of 9 stars.

Able Team is back in South America on the trail of a violent member of a drug syndicate. They're helped by a prosecutor and an ally from a previous book. This book really worked for me. It isn't exactly packed with action. Able Team doesn't fire a shot until chapter 10. But the book isn't at all slow or boring. The story feels exciting and keeps moving throughout the book. What it boils down to is that this is a well written book. Good plotting and pacing, good characters with realistic motivations and reactions. The action takes over in the last half of the book and it's very well handled. I wish all the Gord Eagle books were written this well. 8 stars for this one. I feel like I could go to 9 stars except that it took Lyons 10 chapters to fire his Konzak. But if you aren't an action fanatic you'll give it that extra star.

"Teheran Wipeout" features Mack Bolan in Iran on a mission to kill that wacky Ayatollah Khomeini. Actually, the plot of this book is way more complicated and murky than any 180 page story needs. Let's just say this: Bolan moves around Iran killing lots of thugs and baddies in pretty good action scenes, the last battle being somewhat less satisfying than the others. Grimaldi is on hand and actually gets to do more than fly this time. Other characters are not as interesting or are fuzzy because of too many motives and plot twists. Just based on the action this book is good for 7 stars of reading enjoyment.

In "No Rules, No Referee" the men of Phoenix Force take on a huge number of mostly incompetent bad guys. But, as usual, the Phoenix warriors manage to drop or otherwise lose their firearms often enough to make it look like they might have some trouble beating their adversaries. Judging from the amount of "shuriken-jutsu", "tanto-jutsu", knife fighting and brawling in this author's books I'd guess he was more interested in writing martial arts adventures. Generous dose of jump-rope fu for those in need of a laugh. The plot creaks along without any sense and just sets up targets to be smacked down one after another. Phoenix Force plods along, dropping their guns at every turn, with Calvin and Rafael delivering funny one-liners after kills. Mirth ensues. The villains are cobbled together out of the thinnest cardboard and provide only the slightest trace of menace. Best comedy bit: after the boys land on the villain's hard site in a glider (!) to attack they consider using that glider to pursue an escaping speed boat. I suppose after they had all strapped in and figured out they weren't moving that Manning would have used yet another "quarter pound of C-4" to make some kind of Scooby Doo JATO bottle. I might have given this book four stars but I got very tired of Calvin James being described as "the black badass", "the black warrior", "the black man", etc. OK, I get that he's black. Let it go! I expect by the next book the author will be referring to Katz as "the hebrew hero" or "the kosher badass". Shudder. Between the limping plot, uninteresting villains, silly action scenes and embarassing prose this one came in at 3 stars.

The Bone Yard shows Mack Bolan back in fine form taking the war to the enemy rather than just reacting to an imminent threat. With this kind of book Bolan actually gets a chance to recon and plan a bit which makes his victories more satisfying and plausible than when he is simply shooting the designated 20 or 30 goons ambushing him at every turn. The plot has Bolan coming back to Vegas to attack the mafia. There is a yakuza element in town trying to muscle in and though it doesn't make any real difference to the plot their presence provides more opportunities for action. The yakuza apparently use ninjas though they seem to be some kind of samurai-ninja confabulation. But they make satisfying targets for Bolan whatever they're called. A gang war and some folderol about the old jewish gangsters taking back Vegas provides the opportunity for Bolan to hit several targets. The characters here are slightly more than cardboard. Perhaps it isn't a big problem when most of them won't be drawing breath after the last page. The girl is not very memorable but that is a vast improvement over so many of the annoyingly unrealistic women in these stories that I feel I should praise the author's accomplishment. Tommy Anders appears just for old time's sake but actually contributes nothing to the story. One thing I have to mention that really began to annoy me was the use of "right" and "sure" and "damn right" as flavorful interjections peppering the narrative. These were a harmless writer's quirk when Don Pendleton sprikled them around but this use by another author feels completely articial and contrived. I don't remember ever noticing it before but it really bothered me in this book. The Executioner uses a .444 for a sniper attack in this book and it's nice to see him working smart again. The man is an expert at the long range attack but it's been rarely seen in the last 40 books. Bolan also uses some kind of 40mm grenade launcher called the X18 with a 12 round drum magazine that unfailingly provides HE, smoke, gas, flechette or buckshot in exactly the correct sequence to meet his needs. Uncanny, that. This is a pretty good mission for Bolan and I enjoyed the action scenes. The plot didn't get in the way of the story and the characters weren't appallingly bad. All in all this is a solid 8 star book.

I'm finding it difficult to know how to review "Resurrection Day". I like the book taken as a whole but there are some damned annoying things about it. The good stuff: very good action writing this time, which is a nice surprise after this author's previous Bolan books. The action here is handled well for the most part and the work of Mack Bolan as he follows the mafia drug pipeline is especially welcome, reprising the old Bolan way of taking the initiative and keeping his enemies off balance. The characters are mostly good with a couple glaring exceptions. Karl is especially excellent in a supporting role and Sandy is OK too. Johnny Bolan is probably just about as he should be. He's Mack's younger brother, not Mack himself, so he is a little less able in the book. But he seems right to me. The plot worked well enough and succeeded in getting Johnny into the story and into Mack's fight without seeming too contrived. Only one plot thread felt wrong but it felt really wrong. And I have to say that I enjoyed the San Diego locations because I live here and so much of the book took place in areas I know. The bad stuff: Angela Marcello and that whole plot line. P.U.! Angela was bad enough but the crowning stench was her little band of friends, the "Hard Corps". Girlish giggling optional. These adolescent girls never seem real, never seem interesting, never seem plausible. Their motives are the thinnest tissue of convenience and their exploits make no sense at all. Without their presence this book would be a 10 star normal sized Executioner book. February 1985 seems to have been some kind of grand era for juvenile and annoying groups of girls with improbably silly names: the Hard Corps, the Savannah Swingsaw. Perhaps it's best just to be thankful that Able Team didn't encounter a band of latte loving criminals calling themselves the "Zippity Doo Dolls" in this very silly month. But the bad stuff (the "Hard Corps") can only remove 2 stars from this book. It was a book I'd been looking forward to for a long time and it turned out better than I had dared hope. 8 stars.

"Rain of Doom" puts Able Team back on the trail of the islamicists plotting to attack the USA with guided rockets. This is a sequel to the previous book, "They Came To Kill", and several characters return. But this is a much better book with more action and much better pacing. Able Team is good here and the other characters are OK. The action is well written and believable and the plot moves along briskly without ever seeming to drag. I'm holding back 2 stars only because the ending was too contrived and didn't really fit with the book and because there was nothing about this one to raise it above other good adventures. This is an 8 star effort.

Mack Bolan goes undercover in prison to protect a college kid the KGB has marked for death. Why? We'll find out in chapter 16. Meanwhile a group of 4 attractive women improbably calling themselves "Savannah Swingsaw" has been putting a hurt on the local mob facilities but they take time out to rescue Bolan because one of them used to know him. Plot thickens from here. Bolan is good here though he still seems to have to terrible knack of hooking up with annoying female characters. Shawnee is not as bad as April Rose or Toby Ranger though so things are looking up. There is action spaced throughout the book and it all is pretty good. From some fights in jail and some shootouts through the final removal of the villains the action is solidly written. My only reservation has to do with the ridiculous blowgun contraption used by a Bolan ally in a fight. The main villain is moderately interesting but doesn't seem like enough of a threat to justify Bolan's and the writer's view of him. I liked the character touches but I have to wonder how sharp that branding iron was if a guy could jam it through his heart by just running into it. The mob chief was not interesting at all except that he was dressed like some kind of weird preppy, complete with white sweater tied around his neck. He could have been menacing but he was too much of a bigmouth fop. In the words of Tuco, "When you have to shoot, shoot. Don't talk." The plot kind of just meanders along and when it gets where it was going you won't believe any writer thought it was worth the trip. The 6 stars here are pretty much only for the action.

The Viper Factor is an uneven entry in the Phoenix Force series. There is some faux action early on when Phoenix plays a war game, a Phoenix takedown of 9 street punks unrelated to the plot, and the final big battle at an embassy. Also included is some decent action not involving Phoenix after a chase on a London street. The action is OK, nothing special, and the guys of Phoenix Force still seem strangely unable to keep hold of their firearms in a gunfight. And I'm still wondering if they shouldn't call this series "The Butterfinger Boys". This story is only 161 pages long and far too many pages are devoted to the reactions of heads of state to the problem and the Phoenix response. That leaves not a lot for action and it seems light here. The scene with McCarter and his girlfriend is a good bit but his teaching gig at the butler school was just filler. Too much filler here. And a couple instances of sloppy prose that the editor should have caught: "...portly old man who politely, yet dogmatically slithered past..." Surely he must have doggedly slithered past? And one instance of somebody using a pistol and adopting "a weaver's stance". What exactly he was going to weave was not made clear. The volume is filled out with a 14 page story about Keio Ohara taking on a personal enemy. Not bad but Keio's opponents are even more inept than the usual bad guys Phoenix faces. Would it be so bad to have the hero attacked by half as many bad guys that are twice as dangerous? All things considered this one is too far out on the credibility axis and not high enough on the excitement axis. 5 stars for this average effort.

This tale of the adventures of Nick Stone starts out well with Nick in way over his head- as usual- and then gets uneven as the setting moves to the jungle. Lots of action but seperated by overlong plot and character building sections. Usually McNab's narrative touch makes these periods between action very enjoyable but in this book they seem to drag a bit. When the action does happen it moves quickly and violently and the author never strains the reader's goodwill by making it all seem too incredible. It reads like a lightning quick report of violence from a real outpost. Great stuff. Kelly, Stone's young ward, is only in the story for a short time but his need to protect her still provide's much of his motivation for the story. Other characters are all interesting and seem to be real people, especially the family caught up in the mess as Stone's allies. McNab has a gift for making all his characters live. Except for a bit of slow storytelling with Stone driving around Panama this one moves ahead relentlessly with frequent violent action. And the settings are all well described and vivid, especially the jungle. Andy McNab continues to deliver enjoyable and exciting stories of a top operator wading through one shit storm after another. 8 solid stars of action.

Nick Stone is back in action. His initial mission goes bad but threads from that one get him involved in something bigger that nearly gets him killed. Lots of excitement and action at various points though there are some lengthy stretches of preparation for the main mission. The author has a good narrative voice and Nick Stone's descriptions even make the act of shopping seem interesting. Very little of his ward, Kelly, in this one though her situation has deteriorated and his desperation about it drives this story as it provides most of Stone's motive. A very enjoyable action tale from a top notch author who knows his subject and delivers the goods with a touch of wry humor. 9 solid stars.

Bolan is back in Afghanistan to aid the mujahedeen in their resistance to Soviet aggression. In this book The Executioner aims to destroy a new chemical superweapon that is to be turned to genocide against the people of Afghanistan. This isn't too farfetched a plot as we know from the history of Saddam Hussein gassing his own Iraqi people. The action here is good but not up with the best of the Bolan books. Too many headshots from a moving vehicle as Bolan tries to evade the Soviet army strain credulity. That and Bolan's incredible efficiency using a weapon (Mac 10) with a 30 round box magazine and a cyclic rate of 1145 rpm. Interesting characters including a lady Bolan struggles to trust early on- and who he doesn't bed for once. The villains are nasty and die with regularity. Their marksmanship is woefully inept, as usual. All in all not a bad adventure but not up with the finest Mack Bolan stories. I'll give it 6 stars.

"They Came To Kill" has a couple former allies of Able Team showing up for adventure as well as plenty of new friends and foes. The plot is OK but the story never really seemed to gel. Perhaps there were just too many players. It doesn't help that the book is feels unfinished with loose ends waiting to be wrapped up. There is no action until the end of chapter 7 and Able Team doesn't get into any fights until Chapter 8 (and then it's without Gadgets.) Able doesn't even show up in the book until Chapter 5 when Lyons goes to get his weapons worked on. For an Able Team book there sure isn't much of Able Team for the first 50 pages and Gadgets virtually disappears for the next 40 pages also. There are two small action scenes in the first half of the book. Then things get quiet for about 40 pages until Able gets into another small firefight. The final battle takes out lots of iranian revolutionary guard assholes and a black seperatist radical that was thrown into the mix for no discernable reason. This one just didn't work. There were some good bits but they were lost in a whole lot of empty. It would have been more enjoyable if some of the action and story time devoted to Powell had been given to Gadgets or the rest of Able Team instead. My favorite thing about this book is a line delivered by Lyons: "Nine millimeter was designed for killing Europeans. For dangerous people, you need a .45." That line is almost enough to get this book a sixth star.

"Hellbinder" follows Mack Bolan as he stumbles around after some KGB goon and his allies who steal nerve gas from a U.S. storage facility. There is some laughable action to begin the book and an equally comedic bit of follow-up before the Executioner leaves the U.S. of A. for El Salvador. Another bit of action there that isn't really too bad and then a trip to Syria. The story goes to sleep here for a while but unfortunately it wakes up long enough to showcase Mack Bolan as imbecile in a reprise of his clown act from the first chapter. A big action climax starts off OK but the big guy turns into Super-Bolan near the end and giggling is unavoidable. The author fills the book with stuff like this: "He was what commanders called a 'natural' fighter, using instinctively what other men had to develop slowly." The character he presents though seems to have learned all of his strategy from the films of Mel Brooks and every bit of his tactics from watching Yosemite Sam. Don't believe it? In the first chapter, inhabitants of a house fire at Bolan, throw a grenade at him, he shoots two of their sentries dead and chases away another one. At this point he figures he'll wait to take out the house: "Tomorrow night, or perhaps the next morning." In chapter 5 the "natural fighter" misses taking out the bad mens becuase they don't just sit around at the same location and wait for him to come back with more firepower. Go figure. And what a plan of attack it was! "He figured it would take three shots (with a Redeye on the house)...Then he would charge with assault fire, storm into the place with the Childers slamming death pellets into anything that moved." When Bolan does finally get around to hitting the house "His M-16 on automatic, he charged down the hill, running now, the Sixteen on his hip chattering off 3-round bursts of assault fire as he went." What Bolan might have been assault firing at is unclear since the only 2 folks left at the house were inside when he rocketed the joint and ain't exactly a threat. Or standing. Showing a keen ability to not learn from his mistakes, Bolan goes to a Syrian military airfield in chapter 16 on a "soft probe" to make sure the nerve gas is there before the Mossad attacks the following night. His idea of a "soft probe" is apparently pretty elastic. He garrotes one of many guards outside the target hanger and "dragged the body behind the small building", "surged through the darkness, cane in one hand, rifle in the other" to the side door of the hangar, enters, kills an officer that gets the drop on him, guns down two more soldiers with unsilenced automatic weapon fire, and then heads back, wounded, after a job well done. Only the incredibly poor quality of any opposition and his own superhuman toughness could allow him to succeed here. Fortunately the book contains both of those in spades. I call attention especially to Bolan's heroic fighting actions after being struck in the shoulder by a heavy machine gun bullet: "Damn fifty caliber smashed an arm all to hell." Indeed. Guess he's just lucky they didn't shoot him with a howitzer, it might have made him pass out or sit down. Plot exists and isn't too bad as long as you don't think about it too long. A couple supporting characters are OK but nobody is going to be remembered after the last page is turned. 2 stars for a bit of decent action writing in the El Salvador bits.

"Phoenix In Flames" packs plenty of action. There is some little bit of plot which mostly fills in space to get from one shoot-out to the next. The supporting characters are pretty good, including the villains. Phoenix is OK here and they get into plenty of fights, making things go boom and slinging lead like they owned stock in a bullet factory. The only problem I have with the action is the horrible tendancy of Phoenix and their allies to lose their weapons in a firefight and resort to brawling. It would have been a breathtaking addition to the excitement once. Maybe interesting twice. But every damn member of Phoenix loses his firearms at least once. If this trend continues the series might have to be renamed "The Butterfinger Boys". Perhaps they should consider lanyards. 7 stars for action and some cool supporting characters.

"Blood Dues" is a great reprise of the original Don Pendleton formula. Bolan hits town and works over evildoers like a force of nature. He hits them hard, fast and repeatedly and keeps them off balance. He gathers intel, he plans, he strikes. I can't say enough about how great it is to see Bolan acting like his old self again. The plot: somebody is stealing arms and trucks and Bolan wants to know what's up in Miami. Bolan works against the mob and some cuban bad guys and shakes things up. He makes some alliances and learns the plot in time to stop it. Great action and supporting characters are everywhere in this book. I wish the other books from this same period had half as much great stuff as this one. OK, one slight complaint: why do people in this books continue to chamber a round in their 1911 pistols and then "ease...the hammer down with <their> thumb"? Have they never discovered the thumb safety? Sounds like a great way to experience a broken thumb or worse! This is a 10 star book all the way from the exciting opening to the dramatic epilogue.

The action in "Into the Maze" picks up where "Scorched Earth" left off. Able is on their way to Mexico City to strike at the head of the International operation in Mexico. With their Yaqi allies they take the fight to the baddies. Some plot twists were inserted to cast doubt on some allies but the narrative mostly serves to move Able, and especially Lyons, from firefight to firefight and keep the excitement level high. And there was much rejoicing. Great action scenes involving shootouts in moving vehicles and on city streets. The best is saved for last though with Able leading an assault against the high-rise HQ of the bad guys. Excellent action with lead flying and Ironman's Atchison shredding evildoers. Able and their allies suffer some wounds and the whole episode maintains tension and high excitement. Supporting characters are adequate to the task but not exceptional. Great and frequent action carries this book to the 8 star level.

Nick Stone is once again in over his head in this thriller when he is assigned to locate and kill a rogue MI6 agent involved with moslem terrorists. One complication: the agent is his former lover and he still hasn't gotten her out of his system. Stone is a great character and McNab makes him seem very real and human. He isn't flawless but he's damn good at what he does. His inability to sort out who to trust causes him trouble in this book, just as it did in his earlier adventure. And it nearly gets him killed. Nick's search for the lady agent is interesting but lacking in fireworks, though an action packed prologue recounting a covert mission in Iraq provides plenty of early excitement. After a long (make that "excruciatingly long") section of Nick ovserving the target house on a wooded lakefront, things move very quickly again when he enters and abducts the lady. This is a great long action and suspense filled bit and makes the book really hum. Unfortunately the story bogs down again when Nick joins forces with the lady to try to stop a moslem plot to attack the White House. Some action at the end but it really didn't work and the book should have ended before this plot twist. Nick's relationship with Kelly is again well handled by McNab but since Kelly isn't along with him on this mission we didn't get to enjoy it as much. I missed that. All in all this book has two great action sections separated by a (mostly) exciting and interesting investigation section. The ending section with Nick and the lady trying to prevent the attack weakens the book and keeps me from going for those 2 extra stars.

The book "Ice Cold Kill" is something of a triumph. Never before have ridiculous action, meandering plot and pretentious prose been combined to create such a waste of paper. Mack Bolan begins this book by covertly crossing the border into the Soviet Union. The plan he has come up with for this is to -- wait for it! -- POLE VAULT! Yes, I said pole vault. Bolan parachutes into Romania to a point near the Soviet border (apparently with the pole), then sneaks up to the border and pole vaults his way across the fence. Why didn't he just land from his parachute drop on that side of the frontier? I have no idea. Since Bolan begins this comedy adventure armed only with a .357 magnum revolver and no extra rounds, the odds are stacked against him from the start. In fact the odds are so wildly and incredibly stacked against him that one is forced to ponder why Bolan didn't come up with a better plan -- or ANY plan. This entire mess of a story is just a continuing series of devastating bad breaks for Bolan followed by wildly improbable pieces of good luck. That might be a great formula for a Mad magazine bit, but it just annoys here. The action at intervals throughout the book but none of those scenes lasts very long except Bolan's initial hilarious infiltration. And none of the action is compelling anyway. The scientist Bolan has come to extract from the USSR turns out to be a beautiful blonde woman (of course) and he sleeps with her (of course). Bolan sure does have a hard time in the last few books keeping his mind on the mission. Neither the lady scientist nor any of the other supporting characters are very interesting although the author made one of Bolan's adversaries seem almost supernatural. Lots of opponents fall over dead, several things go boom. Yawn. This is a book that will waste several hours of your life. 2 stars for the sheer giggle effect of having Bolan pole vault into the USSR.

Richard "Demo Dick" Marcinko tells about his career in the navy, mostly in the SEALs. He talks about his fights with Navy brass and his efforts to get things done in spite of the restrictive rules of the Navy. He talks about forming and training SEAL Team Six, the counter-terrorism unit. And he talks about his conviction and incarceration in a federal prison. But mostly Marcinko talks about himself. A lot. How tough he is. What a rebel he is. How much smarter he is than anybody else. How good he is at pretty much everything. I'll grant that as a Navy SEAL he was a highly trained and skilled special warfare operator, part of a highly selective, highly trained and excellent unit. But that isn't enough for Marcinko. According to him, only SEALs are worth paying any attention to and they are so goddamned good that everybody should just let them do whatever the hell they decide. Where he gets this idea is unexplained but he spouts a version of it on every third page. It does seem strange that Marcinko holds anyone who isn't a SEAL in such low regard. His SEALs, if you believe his tale, are very good at killing enemies in rear areas or as they sit around cooking fires or paddle sampans (which is a great thing and it's what special warfare best- ambushes and raids on soft targets). But every time they encounter someone shooting back at them they run like a bunch of scalded apes. That is probably the best and most correct action for a special warfare unit in those situations. But the regular troops that he looks down his snobbish nose at don't have the luxury of picking only fights where the other guys aren't shooting back. The regular grunts don't get to go wherever they damn well please and find nice soft targets to wipe out. Ordinary ground pounders have to go where they're told to meet the enemy in an attempt to gain and hold ground. Sometimes the enemy is bigger or better armed than the grunts expected. Guess what though: beating feet out of the A.O. is not an option for ordinary grunts, they still have to engage the enemy and go where they're ordered. I have great respect for special warfare soldiers and I know that they make a valuable contribution to American military power. But they are supporting units for the manuever elements. They won't win the war on their own. Marcinko seems to think the SEALs could. This is somewhat interesting but for a better and more exciting account of a career in special warfare I suggest "Immediate Action" by Andy McNab. It has a whole lot less chest pounding and literary masturbation.

"Harvest Hell" takes Phoenix Force to Greece to evaluate and contain a terrorist-KGB plot involving a nasty bio-weapon. Much ammunition is expended and many things go boom. In the end, Phoenix Force defeats the evil terrorist scum. Lots of good action in this one. The front third of the book is a bit bare of plot-related action scenes but the lads find plenty other trouble to get into to keep things exciting until the story can dump them into a hornet's nest. Rafael and Gary do some undercover work which has some good bits and gets them into a lot of danger. Katz, McCarter and Calvin James have their own load of firefights and investigation from the outside. Calvin fits in very well with the rest of the team in his second adventure here. Things stay exciting and interesting and all the Phoenix Force guys get something to do. And they're all written well here, seeming to be real men. Good stuff here. A solid 9 stars.

Bolan stumbles through yet another trainwreck of a story in "Skysweeper". What's wrong with this book? Everything. What plot there is doesn't make a lot of sense and the pages devoted to the brainwashing are just a waste of paper. Not that the rest of the story makes any more sense. Bolan gets involved in thwarting the KGB's attempts to steal a new laser weapon. How did he get involved? He found a scientist on his list of KGB assets he had stolen many books back. Of course the scientist was a minor asset and none of the big players were listed but maybe the KGB was just sloppy at keeping records. The scientist Bolan contacts is the number two man on the project and has been threatened by the KGB. Bolan works with this scientist, thwarts the bad guys and saves the president's life. And it's a good thing Bolan shows up because security is apparently pretty lax at the Naval Weapons Center: "At security, Bolan produced some ID that he had rigged for Mack Scott of Pasadena. He sat for his picture and soon had his badge marked for top-secret clearance." Wow! And all that the first time he walked into the base security office! And later on Bolan gets onto the extremely secure laser test flight just by going with his scientist buddy. And after he foils an attempt to knock out Air Force One with the laser, Bolan just sweet talks the NIS investigators and goes on his way. Combine that with the way the DIA undercover agent goes along with Bolan taking charge of the investigation - she doesn't even call in! - and it looks like the good guys don't have much on the ball. The action here is minimal and not very interesting. Bolan is pretty well armed, especially after his scientist buddy just easily gets him an M203, ammo and C-4. They must have a self-serve armory and explosives depot on that base! None of the supporting characters are interesting or memorable. Best of the bunch is a reptile who appears in chapter 17. This mess rates a single, pitiful, charity star. Avoid at all costs!

"Scorched Earth" has Able Team heading south of the border to check out hints that some new players have taken control of the Mexican connection heroin trade, maybe some of the same Unomundo bad guys they've tangled with in previous adventures. This one doesn't really get going until chapter 8 and then all hell breaks loose with Able getting in the first of three pretty good pitched battles. The action in this one is written well and keeps the tension at a high level. A couple good supporting characters are on hand and the bad guys are so evil it's a pleasure to see Able Team and their allies take them out. Lyons gets most of the attention here again but not so badly as in some of the other books in the series. This one rates a solid seven stars. If there was one more good firefight before chapter 8 this would get another star.

Mack Bolan is wounded and hunted by a crew of killers as "Prairie Fire" opens. He's handcuffed, unarmed alone. This book tells a great, suspenseful story. After escaping from some professional hardmen the Executioner is in bad shape when he takes refuge in a barn. He is discovered by the farmer and his family but they don't know what to make of the handcuffed wounded man. But Bolan's presence puts these people in danger from the men hounding him. The action in this story is almost entirely in the last third of the book. Up until that point the only action true action scene is the flashback to Bolan's capture and escape. But when the book does turn to action it is terrific. Bolan uses his brain for the first time in a long time in the fight agains the baddies. Very nicely done by the author. It's a welcome change to see Bolan cut off from help and without a vast array of potent firepower for once. But don't think that the book doesn't get good until the action starts. This book is solid drama and great storytelling building up to the big action at the end. Wonderful supporting characters in the Chadwick family. And even though the main villain and his crew aren't unforgettable, they provide a potent threat to Bolan and his allies. Even Mack Bolan's inner musings get a little bit of space here and are handled nicely by the author. It's nice to see somebody paying attention to the big guy's mind and doing such a good job. This book is a real pleasure and I was compelled to read it in one evening. The only thing keeping me from giving this book that last star is the sex scene. I thought it was out of place, unnecessary and awkward (of course, so is real sex sometimes.) It detracted from my enjoyment just enough to keep this book at the 9 star level. But that's a good solid 9 stars. Read it.

"The Black Alchemists" are terrorist assholes trying to extort money from the U.S. through poisoning consumer goods. They have to be stopped and Phoenix Force is handed the assignment. For this mission there is a new member joining the team, Calvin James. He's an American SWAT cop in San Francisco when Manning and McCarter recruit him after observing his work in a hostage situation. Calvin is an excellent character and fits nicely into the group, especially since he is a medical specialist. I'm looking forward to reading more adventures with him on the team. The action in this story is excellent and there is a lot of it. Phoenix takes out several terrorist locations including the climactic assault on the mountaintop HQ. The story is very good and well paced, bringing us to each action set piece with good storytelling. And what a story! From the back cover there is no secret that Phoenix loses a member on this mission. The death of the Phoenix warrior is classic action at its best. But the last chapter, seeing how the Phoenix survivors deal with the loss of their frienc is also incredible. I never thought I'd get a lump in my throat reading a Phoenix Force book but I sure did during this one! Great action, an awesome story and lots of drama make this the best of the Phoenix Force stories so far in the series. It's a solid 10 star book.

In "Beirut Payback" the Executioner is on the trail of the KGB terror master who has come to Lebanon. During one night and day Bolan helps to thwart a plan to kill Lebanon's president and takes out lots of terrorist baddies. This book as another middle of the pack adventure for Mack Bolan. It starts off numbingly slow: 3 chapters pass before the big guy can make it to meet Zoraya, his arab contact. She is (of course) a beautiful woman. On the way there Bolan loses his companion (Katz's nephew, a Mossad agent) and picks up some scared little arab boy wandering the streets. Once Mack starts hitting the bad guys' camps the action kicks into high gear. Chapters 6 through 11 are jammed full or fierce action and are the best part of the book. Things slow down again with some plot elements about CIA agents and possible treachery from Bolan allies. Late in the book Bolan again hits a terrorist camp with lots of gunfire and things going boom. The parts of the book trying to be warm and sentimental, like the bit with the arab boy, are just corny. The prose in these parts is silly and the dialog reads like a soap opera script. The supporting characters, except for Katz in a minor role, are not very memorable and the story is not very compelling. This book gets 5 stars almost entirely due to the scenes of action with Bolan hitting the enemy camps in chapters 6 through 11 and again in 18 through 20. It's good but the rest of the story is nothing to write home about.

Able Team and their allies wage war on terrorist scum trying to cripple the U.S. computer industry. This is a surprisingly good book, coming after the author's previous story in the series. Everything that was wrong with that one is made good here. This book ranks among the best of Able Team's adventures so far. The story is good and well paced. The villains are interesting and easy to hate, and they meet their fates with sufficient regularity to keep things hopping. Action is the name of the game here and it begins before Able Team even gets to fire a shot with attacks on computer research firms by the terrorist panzies. But when Able starts taking the fight to the scum the tempo really ratchets up. Pol, Gadgets and Lyons with his Atchison deal out death to baddies swiftly, surely and often. Lead flies, things go Boom, and thrills keep coming. The action scenes in this book are so much better than the author wrote in the previous story that it almost doesn't seem like the same guy wrote them. One nice thing about this book is that Pol and Gadgets get just as much attention and coverage as Lyons. Too many of the Able Team books seem like they belong to a series called "Carl Lyons and Two Other Guys" so this is really a welcome change. And Able Team gets lots of help in this one with cameo appearances by Manning, McCarter and Katz who all deliver their share of destruction to the enemy. And Hal Brognola gets in on the action this time as well in two (!) shootouts of his own. Add in two great supporting characters in Deborah Devine and, especially, the exciting Lao Ti and you've got a real powder keg of excitement in this tale. This book just misses being a ten star effort. It's a very strong 9 stars. Read it.

A dismissed space scientist seizes control of space-based nuclear weapons in an effort to force an end to deployment of these weapons. Bolan is on his trail to stop him before he resorts to using the nukes. The scientist's henchman has murderous plans of his own. This book had an interesting plot idea and two promising characters in the disillusioned scientist and his partner. Unfortuately, the book doesn't do justice to the promise. The two main problems with this book are the writer's lack of a grasp of tactical or military matters and his misunderstanding of the Mack Bolan character. As to the first matter, Bolan and the other characters are constantly blundering about and seem damn lucky to not blow themselves up at every turn. The Executioner constantly "charges", "rushes", "runs" and "sprints" whether he's on a hard or soft probe, whether he's sneaking or attacking. I think in this book he walks into more traps and breaks more trip wires than in the previous 65 adventures of the series put together. Despite all the narrative posturing about "a born combat expert" and other puffery, this author's Bolan is the most inept combat buffoon this side of Gomer Pyle. He must have the luck of Mr. Magoo to keep coming out ahead of his opponents. (Noting that double-aught buckshot is a pellet, not a "slug", might seem like pouring it on but it's typical of the author's lack of understanding. And what's the deal with these "quarter-pound chunks of C-4" and "C-4 primer cord"?) But as bad as the handling of the tactical details and action (which any author might have trouble with if unfamiliar), the botched job of writing Mack's character is much worse. He is, we are told, in a vengeance thirst for blood against the KGB after the attack on Stony Man Farm which caused April's death and Bear's injuries. But the first time a KGB agent shows up he not only partners up with her, he makes whoopee with her too: "They both had to live for the moment because the next might never come." Huh? Guess he wasn't all that broken up about April after all. Mack even still goes for her in the final chapter, leaning in to make out with her as she tries to knife him. Only an FBI agent with a quick trigger finger saves his bacon then. And in the one and a half page bit at the end of the book called "The Turning Point", supposedly by Mack Bolan and I guess along the lines of his old Journal, these words are written by The Executioner: "Would that I were there to keep them from harm." Looks like old Mack might be channeling Percy Shelley! Honestly, does this sound like the kind of thing Mack would have written in his journal? Not to me. I could go on about the lady KGB agent using a Luger and an MP-40 but I don't want to pile it on this author. I'm giving this one a single star because it was sheer torture and drudgery even though the pacing and plot idea were OK. Man, do I ever miss Don Pendleton!

This is another of that long line of Phoenix Force cartoon adventures. A not too bad plot idea with an ancient villain group brought in as the heavies. Should have been better. Some middle eastern crazies (i.e., moslems fundamentalists) have attempted to kill the Israeli prime minister. They'll try again so Katz is summoned to Mossad HQ. Katz calls the fellows. "Avengers asseble!" And that's all she wrote. There is a ton of action in this one. I don't think I'm stretching the truth to say that every scene with Phoenix Force ends with the lads ambushed by bloodthirsty moslem fanatics. Hordes of maddened mohammedans throw themselves into suicide attacks against the boys. Fortunately for our heroes, none of these martyr-seekers has taken the time to zero their weapons so that "A Team" like flurries of bullets result in narry a hit. (This is especially valuable since the Phoenix Force warriors take on the auto-fire weilding hordes with mostly .380 autos and the like - except for Manning who improvises a shoe bomb by dismantling his tape recorder in the middle of a firefight. I'm not makin' this stuff up.) Actually, the provisional martyrs try to use poison-dipped daggers a lot also which gives the good guys another big advantage. A last big battle scene during the attack on the loony stronghold is not any more exciting than the 10 or 12 earlier ones in spite of the curious use of an ancient samurai weapon by Keio (huh?). But McCarter's crossbow is pretty cool. Not much to recommend this one. The action is all it has going for it and really the level of realism for the action scenes is about 2 steps below classic "Jonny Quest". Rafael has a romantic interest who suffers from Cartwright's Bride syndrome. Nothing special there. The supporting characters are not memorable and the idea of Katz and his four buddies taking over security for the Israeli prime minister is a bit far-fetched to say the least. 2 stars, mostly for that crossbow.

To be brief, this book suffers mostly from problems with the Mack Bolan character. Bolan seems to have been replaced by a mean-spirited imposter here in long stretches of the book. Maybe more ice-cold than mean. He joins forces with the Khmer Rouge, which is pretty awful on its own. While in their camp he sees a whole family, including small children, being led off for execution because of the father's treachery. Does Bolan swing into action to stop the slaughter of the children? Of course not, because he's working with the Khmer Rouge so he'll go along with their brand of brutality. Bolan murders the wife of a KGB agent he has killed because she might start looking for him and raise an alarm. Huh? Is this the same Bolan I've read about in over 60 previous adventures? The short answer is "no". There hasn't been a book that was so off the mark in handling Bolan's character since "Sicilian Slaughter". Man, oh man, do I ever miss Don Pendleton! This one gets 2 stars because there is some decent action (not all of it, mind you, but some of it is passable.)

Although Five Rings of Fire is crammed full of action, it is a very unsatisfying and cartoonish kind of action. The entire book is something of a mess from beginning to end. The villains' plan never makes sense. The supporting characters are not very well done and completely unbelievable. Able Team is OK here but once again the book is written as if it was for a series called Carl Lyons and two other guys. At least this time Gadgets gets a bit of attention, even some romance. Unfortunately Pol gets left out and is just an afterthought in this story. One main problem with the story is the way Able Team lets the lady gymnastics coach, who they are supposed to protect, join in with the firefights and assaults. Very bad for the credibility of the story. But the main problem with this book is the lack of good action writing. None of the action scenes was convincing or compelling. This one gets 2 stars just because Gadgets got a little better coverage here than usual.

"Doubleshot" brings us a story about James Bond in distress with physical and possibly psychiatric problems stemming from injuries suffered in his last adventure ("High Time To Kill"). Bond's adversary is once again "The Union" which feels like old-time SPECTRE but with a new name. The plot this time around involves Gibraltar and a far-fetched plan to reclaim it for Spain. Bull fighting figures prominantly and much action takes place in Morroco and Spain. The villains' plan is pretty wild and the story veers off into unbelievable a few times. Not as bad as one of those kooky plots in a Clive Cussler book, but pretty loopy for a Bond novel. Bond spends most of this book being led around by the villains so they can use him in their plan. Because of this and also because of his deteriorated condition, Bond is largely ineffective throughout the book. This is hardly unprecedented for the character: several of Ian Fleming's original novels had Bond stumbling and muddling his way about until at the end of the book he could save the day. That's largely what we have here also. A couple plot holes (how exactly did Bond know where to find that PPK?) caused distraction and Raymond Benson isn't a great action scene writer but he gets the job done. Bond does some snooping, some detective work and some fighting. Two bed partners for Bond in this book. Nothing great or terrible about this book. It joins that great mass of Bond novels that are fun to read but make you appreciate the really good ones. 5 stars for a middle-weight entry.

Andy McNab's first thriller is a top-notch combination of violent action, pulse-pounding excitement and edge of your seat suspense. In "Remote Control" McNab introduces a new hero, Nick Stone, who makes most other famous fictional heroes look like prancing twits (can you say "Dirk Pitt"?) An ex-SAS operator and current deniable ops specialist for Britain, Stone is something of a cross between Hammett's Continental Op and Alistair MacLean's Phillip Calvert: tough as jacketed hollow points, totally on-task, and cunning enough to beat the bad guys at their own game. Nick Stone has more life in him (and more blood and soul) than any action hero this side of Pendleton era Mack Bolan. The action in "Remote Control" never lets up for more than a few pages, and even when Stone isn't facing guns and fists he's deep into the task at hand and planning 2 or 3 moves ahead so that the pace just keeps up and the tension builds. Stone has to work against a plot without any help after he finds the family of a friend murdered. On the run and out in the cold with his friend's seven year old daughter in tow, Stone uses his training, intelligence and toughness to best advantage. And just when he's past one challenge, an even greater one confronts him. The story is told in first person and it really sounds like authentic dialogue. This is like the golden age of Len Deighton's spy writing but with a tougher and more realistic hero. Hard-boiled stuff! The great relationship between childless Stone and seven year old Kelly is a wonderful thing in this book. I think I worried as much for him when he had to finally tell Kelly her family was dead as when he was in any of the many deadly encounters in the story. McNab obviously knows something about children and Kelly's character is so real it makes the reader very frightened for her safety. The cover quote from author Stephen Coonts claims McNab is "the best suspense thriller writer. . . since Alistair MacLean" and I can't argue with that. This book was everything you'll want in a thriller. I can't wait to start the next one! This is a 10 star effort if ever there was one. Read it.

"Dead Man Running" is the finale to the Day of Mourning trilogy and serves as a start to a new direction for the Executioner as Bolan leaves his government sanction and ties behind to pursue a personal war against the KGB and animal man. This book has Bolan acting on his own again for the most part, taking on the mafia in 4 bloody clashes. Mob soldiers fall by the dozens as Bolan cuts off a drug deal between the mob and the KGB and works to eliminate the KGB mole inside the U.S. intelligence circle. Bolan impersonates a mob "black ace" again for a few pages but the action doesn't slow down as it sometimes has when he uses this ruse. As the end of the federal sanction and the terrorist wars this book might get high marks from me even if it wasn't packed with good old Bolan action and some interesting characters and motivations. Mack is finally back doing what he should have always been doing: living life and fighting the war on his own terms, relying on himself and his skills and taking on which enemies he chooses when and where he sees fit. No more whiney April Rose (can't help it, she just really, really annoyed the hell out of me!) or immediate access to advanced fighter support. But this book is good. It earns its 9 stars with good and frequent action, interesting characters, a decent plot and the Bolan factor. The only thing holding this one back from a 10th star is the lack of Bolan philosophy that adds that extra dimension to so many of his best stories. But this is a very solid 9 star book.

Terminal Velocity is one long Bolan tale that reads more like 3 tales looped together. The first part has Bolan and McCarter going to Afghanistan (after a nap-inducing training perior) to steal a new Soviet super-weapon helicopter that shoots fire. Yeah, I thought so too. The mission in Afghanistan is more boring stuff, going to interesting action when McCarter and Bolan hit the Soviet airfield, and back to boring again once Bolan gets in the helicopter. Others may enjoy the action of the helicopter duels but to me they just bring yawns. Second part of the book has Bolan improbably going behind the iron curtain as a bodyguard to General Crawford's daughter, Kelly, who we last saw hanging out with pimp drug dealers as some kind of slut in "Day of Mourning". Turns out she is an Olympic class athlete and is competing in some international games there. (Guess the slut business is flexible enough to allow lots of training.) Bolan is set up when his evil twin, uh, I mean "double", apparently kills a radical leader and the KGB gets it on tape. From here on this part of the book is good as Bolan escapes with the aid of a new ally. Third part of the book opens OK with some spy thriller stuff. Not much action as Bolan sneaks into Russia and sets his plan in motion. Some action occurs as he confronts a KGB ambush at an arranged meeting but it isn't much. More action at the end as Bolan moves to rescue his look-alike. Action wise, this one is light unless you are into aircraft duels. Plot wise this one is spotty with several improbable actions and circumstances. Character wise it was just OK. Bolan is OK but not awesome. McCarter was OK. The best characters were some of the supporting cast. So why do I give this one 8 stars? Simple: Bolan is finally turning his back on the "terrorist wars" era and getting away from being a government lap dog.

Korean Killground. Hmmm. I'm trying to think of something nice to say about this book but I'm stumped. This one took me more than 2 weeks to get through. The word boring leaps to mind. The action, while plentiful and explicit, was neither believable nor interesting. Couple that with a wildly unbelievable plot, some fouled up technical aspects and some plain old plodding prose and you've got one very long cure for insomnia in this one. Maybe I'm being too hard on this one because so much of it takes place on the DMZ. During my tour in the 2nd Infantry Division I spent 2 months on the DMZ so maybe I'm holding this book to too high a standard. Naaah. This book is a boring stinker. 1 star for showing up.

This is a reference book and marketing tool for the Executioner series. I really prefer the original War Book. In order: Don Pendleton writes 11 pages about the world of the Executioner after the events of "Day of Mourning", how we got there and where Bolan is headed. Pretty good. "Incident at Hoi Binh" short story featuring Sgt Bolan in Vietnam. Not bad. "Laser Raze" short story featuring the destruction of the Laser Wagon (and there was much rejoicing.) Combat Catalog is essentially drawings and some basic info on some of the weapons used in the various series. Basic map of Stony Man Farm and drawings and floorplans of the buildings. "The Gallery" is just a listing of characters appearing in the Executioner series from #39 to #62 and the Phoenix and Able books of that period. Terrorist Organizations covers those groups from the same period of the books. "Dear Don" is an overlong letters column. "Roll Call" is a list of the Marines who died in Reagan's fiasco operation in Beirut when their barracks was blown up. About 11 pages of excerpts from previously published Able and Phoenix books. I'll give one star for Don Pendleton's introduction, one for the roll call feature (patriotism swells in the heart of the American bear!) and a single star for the 2 short stories. So 3 stars to this one because I'm feeling generous.

There were two things about this book that I really liked. The action during the terrorists' attack on the castle was good, and the story is about 45 pages shorter than most in the series ending on page 138. The story is preposterous. I know Able Team is the best at what they do. I just can't see the British government letting them take control of the operations in England. What were the SAS, Special Branch and the police doing? Well, nothing, actually. The characters aren't worth discussing except to say that the mystery identity of "the Shillelagh" is a cheat because the author refers to "he" in the narrative and it turns out to be a woman (as everyone will figure out anyway.) The last 40 pages of this book are taken up by a short story called "Early Fire" which features a pre-Executioner Sgt Mack Bolan in Vietnam rescuing a lady reporter who is convinced she knows all about the war. That description makes the story sound more interesting than it actually is. 3 stars for this mess.

Day of Mourning brings about vast changes in the story of the Executioner. Stony Man Farm and the man known as Phoenix have enemies. The farm is attacked and good people are killed. Mack Bolan is unable to save the lives of all his Stony Man people but he will find the scum responsible. This book starts off with some not very effective action underwater and with Grimaldi getting a Harrier shot out from under him. From there we move to the farm and learn there has been a saboteur at work. Bolan and Hal visit the Oval Office and interagency rivalry in the form of an asshole named Farnsworth threatens to close down the Stony Man project. Bolan rips through the DC metro area on a blitz straight out of the mafia wars era in an attempt to find the parties responsible for the attack on Stony Man Farm. This is the best part of the book because it's the Executioner back doing what he is best at: shaking the enemy's house down. The action all concludes with a commando raid on Stony Man Farm and the loss of Stony Man personnel. The raid is good and lead zings around all over the place. The weak underwater action and setup in the first few chapters keep this from being a 10 star book. And I may actually be rating it high just because the old Bolan blitzer is back for the middle half of this tale. But that middle half is damn welcome after such a long time of bolan just taking out predetermined target after predetermined target. I hope it lasts for a while in the next phase of the Executioner's war. 9 stars.

Phoenix Force is out to stop the plans of an alliance of leftist terrorists and nazis aimed at U.S. forces in Germany. These terrorist scum have been murdering U.S. soldiers and Phoenix has been called in to stop the insanity. The characters of Phoenix are pretty well written here, with Manning still thinking about the death of a lover in the previous book although the book is not drenched in pathos thankfully. The bad guys are evil, some are maniacal, most are pathetic cowards, i.e. terrorists. The plot is enough to get Phoenix into several blazing firefights without seeming too contrived. No big surprises though there is the subplot of an east german agent opposing the terrorists from within unknown to Phoenix Force. One thing that puzzled me though was why the West German anti-terrorist experts, GSG 9, seemed content to stand by and provide perimiter security while 5 foreigners did all the assaults on terrorist haunts. I really thought GSG 9 should have had something to do with all the action on West German soil. The action is uniformly good. Lots of various types of lethal weaponry spray lead and go boom. And there was much rejoicing. From not quite halfway through the book until the end Phoenix is involved in one contact after another and they all contain enough excitement to put this one in the upper tier of action books. My only criticism of the action scenes is that in the last assault by Phoenix they go in with great firepower but 4 of them end up in hand-to-hand combat with terrorists. Pretty sloppy tactics. Action scenes get this one a 7 star rating.

The action is frequent and frantic in Tiger War. The Executioner is out to destroy the largest heroin producing group in Southeast Asia. Lots of action here from the opening page until the last. Most of it is very good and keeps the excitement high. There is certainly a lot happening in this book. And that might be one reason I don't rate it higher: the author packs an elephant attack, the capture of a moving train, a daring helicopter rescue and a samurai sword duel into a tale about nationalist Chinese drug lords in Thailand. Bolan seems a bit off his game here. Sure he fights like a demon and takes out the bad guys. But the book opens with him running out of an ambush and then on three seperate occasions he gets captured and disarmed: once when he and an ally walk into an ambush, once when he is caught daydreaming of vengeance while chasing the chief baddie and blunders into yet another ambush, and once when he is kicking back in a hut naked and unarmed after a band of armed insurgents have passed by the house he's hiding in. Oh, well, at least he gets to escape 3 times. The villains are OK, the chief villain is nasty (but the Samurai thing for a Chinese nationalist colonel seemed a bit forced.) The supporting players are forgettable. This one gets 7 stars just for the frequent and intense action. And for the elephant-fu!

"Kill School" follows Able Team as they go to El Salvador where they hope to capture the evil Col. Quesada, who appeared in the earlier book, "Justice by Fire", with the help of a Salvadoran army officer. The plot is kind of confusing with the various political factions and trying to keep the Salvadoran loyalties straight can be tough. Probably just like in real life. The mission only lasts one day but Able gets into several actions. Lots of things going boom. For all the complexity of the political machinations the plot is pretty simple: Able lands, searches, assaults, pursues, assaults again. The action is OK but not spectacular except for the assault on Quesada's family compound. The final action is good too but we only get to see the beginning and then the end with Grimaldi coming in to the rescue. Lyons' Atchisson and lots of MG and AR fire keep things lethal. But long stretches of driving around, talking and sneaking in the first half of the book don't seem necessary to the plot and kind of slow things down. Lyons seems nearly insane in this one. I understand that he is having a tough time after Flor's death in the previous book. Still, he just takes enormous chances and puts everyone else at risk with his wild-ass warrior, fly by the seat of the pants approach to taking Quesada. Gadgets is barely a presence here as usual. Blancanales seems too ready to go along with Lyons' stupid plans. The villains are not memorable. They mostly serve as motivating factors rather than opponents or threats. And they offer a continuity with the Unomundo story line of the past 3 books. The plot element of betrayal of Able Team by elements within the U.S. government or administration is also developed here. This one gets 6 stars for the big action scene, for Lyons' pain dealing with Flor's death, for the non-simplistic view of good and bad factions in El Salvador, and for the damage Carl Lyons seems to have suffered in the actions (if he hadn't been hurt it would have seemed like a cartoon.)

Mack Bolan works against a white slaver operation in "Sold for Slaughter" and goes from Kansas to Algiers wiping out the bad guys. The book opens with Bolan rescuing Smiley Dublin, one of the Ranger girls from previous Executioner books. She has been investigating the white slaver operation in the states but after she is discovered the mob boss puts her up for sale. Bolan, posing as a mafia Black Ace again, crashes the slave market in Kansas and rescues the drugged undercover fed. The trail of the white slaver operation leads to Algeria and the flesh markets there. Bolan, with Smiley Dublin in tow, begins to rattle the local slavers. The Executioner hits the local boss with a sniper attack on his home after introducing himself to a contact as mob guy Frank LaMancha. Bolan's attempts to take apart the slaver operation are complicated because Smiley Dublin, in a move right out of the April Rose playbook, takes off on an independant operation, gets captured (again) and causes Bolan to tear the underworld of Algiers apart trying to get her back. Action is OK. Not the best in the beginning stuff but when the story moves to Algiers things get better. Bolan uses the .460 Weatherby for his sniper attack. He also uses an Uzi and an XM-18, some kind of automatic .40mm grenade launcher with a drum magazine. Very effective but it seemed as if Bolan had uncanny powers to predict which type of .40mm grenade (gas, flechete, HE, etc) would be needed for each shot before he loaded that magazine! The villains are not especially memorable or evil (for white slavers, that is: they're still plenty evil) and don't seem to offer much threat or challenge to Bolan. This one was actually pretty good. Without the annoying presence of Smiley Dublin I would have called this a 7 star book. Her ridiculous actions and lack of moxie (for a veteran federal undercover cop) were so lame that the book gets only 6 stars.

Phoenix Force is back in Africa in "Aswan Hellbox" and this time they're chasing down a renegade American villain and his murderous horde before they can blow up Egypt's Aswan dam. The plot of this story would be just a simple persuit through the desert but the addition of Salibogo and Nemtala add great relationship angles and give all Phoenix, but especially Manning some depth. Katz shines though in a scene in the book where he saves a life and never fires a shot. The villain here is over-the-top evil. He slaughters whole villages, rapes girls and drinks human blood. Very nasty and a real asshole. The only bad thing about this villain for the story is that the authors try too hard to give us some reasons why he went bad. I don't actually care why the villains in these stories go bad. They're evil and that's enough. The action is good but I felt the whole thing relied too much on the use of the Mark 19 MOD-3 40mm machine gun, actually some kind of automatic 40mm grenade launcher with a range of 1600 meters and 400 RPM rate of fire. Wow! Nice weapon but it seemed to be the crutch that most of the Phoenix Force action relied on. The Fast Attack Vehicle (FAV) it was mounted on was very cool though. It was some kind of electric-powered silent running dune buggy that got up to 75 mph. The bad guys are bad and their attrocities against innocent folks make their destruction very satisfying. But the bad guys aren't even half as interesting as Salibogo and Nemtala. They make this story work. If there had been less reliance on long range boom-boom with that grenade launcher this would have been a 9 or maybe even a 10 star book. As it is this book is a solid 8 stars. At least 3 of those stars are for the two great characters joining Phoenix in this book.

Crude Kill. I have nothing good to say about this book. So I guess I'll complain a bit. The story takes Bolan from Italy to London to France to a submarine to an oil tanker to an island and back to France. The plot has Bolan thwarting a terrorist plan involving the hijacking of the world's largest oil tanker. Action occurs at each location and while that would normally be a boon, the action here is so ineptly written that the scenes miraculously seem tedious and confusing at the same time. Bolan doesn't seem to know what he's doing. Maybe he got hit in the head shortly before this book started, I don't know. He runs, jogs and goes up steps 2 at a time while on his soft probe (and he has no plan of what he'll do, of course.) He kicks open doors and bursts in during hard hits on terrorist infested buildings, or in one case just flying kicks his way into the hidden room feet first. He hits the terrorist controlled super tanker but picks up an AK-47 dropped by a dead terrorist because all he brought was his Beretta 93-R and his Automag: "Bolan wished he had more firepower." Maybe Bolan was confused and thinking that the 93R was a submachine gun. It is referred to as a "machine pistol" and he doesn't carry it in a holster but on a lanyard around his neck: "His 93-R Beretta was too big to carry comfortably under the sport jacket, but on the lanyard there was room enough." Then, four paragraphs later: "He fisted his .44 Automag..." I guess Big Thunder was a nicer fit under a blazer? And then there are those 60-round magazines for the Beretta. Huh? To take out the submarine Bolan is carrying "two quarter pound blocks of C4" and he uses "half of one of the blocks" against each of the two propeller shafts. 2 ounces of C4 on each propeller shaft? Hell, even if he'd used a whole standard block of C4 on each one I doubt he'd do much more than rattle the shaft. Bolan seems at times to be the luckiest dullard in creation and other times he seems superhuman. Even the presence of Grimaldi can't redeem this clunker. I'll give one recommendation only. Don't read this book unless you've decided you must read every title in the series or unless you need to do penance for some minor sin. This one gets a single star.

In the tense and exciting adventure of "Army of Devils", Able Team is out to stop murderous gangs of drug-boosted punks before they destroy Los Angeles. Assisting them this time is Flor Trujillo, the lady DEA agent from "Texas Showdown" and "Stony Man Doctrine", and as much as I dislike having April Rose around, I have to say that Flor is a wonderful character and she adds a lot to this story. The beginning of the story shows the horrific cruelty and violence of the street punks on rampages aided by a new super-drug. These gang punks are the lowest of scum. The villains sending these monstrous punks on their sprees are evil through and through. Several chapters are devoted to establishing the back-story of these villains and their organizations and plans, which makes the story better, but after the opening burst of gang violence we already know these are evil creeps. Lyons is troubled throughout this story by his inner demons and his worries for Flor, his lover. The Iron Man will need all his wits to come out the end of this one in one piece. Able Team doesn't go into action until about the middle of the book but from then on this one is moving at full speed with action on nearly every page. Flor is along with Able as they go into action but she gets involved in her own action and really shows that she can handle herself. Meanwhile, Lyons, Gadgets and Pol have their hands full trying to take out the punks who are so pumped up on super-drugs that they won't stop for anything less than having their brains shot out. This is scary stuff indeed. Lyons and Pol both use Atchisson shotguns for their big assault of the gang HQ and there is plenty of splattering gore and destruction. Good characters and a tense plot, evil slimy villains you love to see taken down, Able Team and Flor in action up to their eyeballs and great pacing and writing make this one a top notch adventure. 10 stars.

Ambush on Blood River has Phoenix Force joining Bolan for a mission in Africa that is more of an adventure than a straight action yarn. Bolan and Phoenix are out to recover some long hidden diamonds and documents after they're recovered by the thief and his KGB led allies. The story has enough plot to keep you interested even though there aren't that many action scenes. There is a good sub-plot concerning Yakov and the thief and their association during the Congo wars. The location of the story in central Africa really helps due to the great atmosphere evoked by the author's descriptions. The action here is limited to a bare-knuckle fight and a kind of mini-firefight in a village until the final action payoff. But that payoff of the ambush and the escape of Bolan's force is very good and should make action fans happy. The only thing that keeps this from being a 10 star book is a feeling that there might have been one more action scene in there somewhere. But it still makes a great read. 9 stars.

Dragon's Kill has Phoenix Force battling a group of Japanese terrorists with dreams of restoring imperial Japan. The action moves from Japan to Hawaii and never lets up. This book is about action first and foremost. There are numerous firefights from the time Phoenix Force gets off the plane in Tokyo. All the action is furious and written with good pacing and some tension. In one memorable chapter the guys raid a terrorist location and kill 42 terrorists in a frenzy of bullets and hand-to-hand fighting. The plot is OK but the big technology used by the villains is better suited to a Bond film. Too far out there. And there are some minor things like how can all five members of Phoenix Force fly to Hawaii in one F-4? I didn't think those things had that much cabin space. And why does the Navy send a couple Seals to pilot the helicopters? Doesn't the Navy have any helicopter pilots? Who knows? The villains in this one are more insane and annoying than actually evil. They swarm and attack frequently but they actually don't seem to present that much of a challenge to Phoenix Force. But they do pile up steadily as corpses in all directions and in lots of locations so I guess they do their part. The action here is what gives this one the high rating. The Japanese setting could have been used better and the villains could have been better but with this much action pounding along you won't be bothered by it. A solid 8 stars.

"Flesh Wounds" begins with Mack Bolan looking for April Rose. She hasn't made contact since she went out to meet some survivalist loony that she knew who might be a lead. Sure enough she's been captured and Bolan has to rescue her. The story starts off kind of goofy but really picks up after the rescue of April. She stays on the mission with Bolan as they try to locate the would-be leader of a reborn Weathermen terror group, learning along the way that he and a KGB terror expert have a big event in the works. The story stays good all the way until the final confrontation with the KGB bad guy, which turns kind of silly again. Bolan seems OK here but he spends a lot of time worrying about April. And although she wasn't nearly as annoying as she has been in the past, she makes the story less enjoyable by her silliness and her effect on Bolan's thinking. The rest of the characters encountered are OK. One undercover fed in particular is top-notch but only briefly seen. The bad guys are bad enough, though they're mostly mean punks except for the Russian. The action is good though not as frequent here as in some of the Executioner adventures. Still, the long stretch when Mack and April are in the clutches of some terrorists pretending to be outlaws on the lam is pretty tense. It would have been nice to see Mack use some weapons other than his Beretta though. Especially during some assaults. Oh, well. For a book with April Rose in it from very nearly the beginning, this one was pretty good. The opening and payoff weren't as good as the middle. If they had been this would have been an 8 star book. As is, I rate it a 7 star effort.

Justice by Fire is another excellent entry in the Able Team series. This series has certainly provided some great books full of action but this one is the best so far. In a story with connections to the Unomundo angle, Able Team has to help protect a reporter who can testify against right-wing Salvadoran death-squads operating in the U.S., maybe with the approval of high levels of the government. The guys are on their own in this fast paced action tale. The villains are so nasty it makes you want to join Able and help them usher these monsters into the next world. Truly evil and cruel terrorists. Lyons, Gadgets and Pol chop them to pieces in 4 tense and dangerous firefight encounters. Great action as the team tries to escape the well armed and equipped death-squad goons. The lead flies and you can almost hear Lyons' Atchisson booming and the whine of bullets, slugs and 00-buck! The reporter and the rest of the folks encountered are true to life and succeed in making the reader care about what happens. Beyond taking out the bad guys in this battle, it becomes important that the good guys win the war. This story has action and tense plotting with great characters. This is a 10 star book!

Mack Bolan heads to the small Maine fishing town of Kenlandport to deal with some outsiders who are terrorizing the locals. The bad guys have set up a smuggling and people moving operation on an island. There is quite a bit of action here and some of it is really good. Also, the local people who figure into the story are all interesting and well written. I only have a few complaints about this story. The villains, except for one of the locals, are not memorable or interesting and mostly just serve to give Bolan something to shoot at. Bolan's mission and his execution of it were kind of less than exciting; not much tension there. The other weakness concerned Bolan himself and his tendency on this mission to be surprised by enemy sentries. Made me wonder if Mack wasn't daydreaming or something. It seemed like very uncharacteristic behavior for the big guy. I actually thought the best part of the story had nothing to do with Bolan at all: the story of Becky's captivity and her struggles to escape. Also a nice bit of justice dealt out to a villain by a couple locals is a real treat. In spite of the problems with Bolan's mission and his tendency to blunder into sentries there were enough interesting things with the locals to make this book above average. I figure it's worth 6 stars.

"White Hell" starts off with Phoenix Force already on their mission to thwart an attack on oil shipping facilities by some IRA terrorist loonies. The book opens with a persuit of the bad guys on I-5 in Seattle that ends in firey destruction. Zip to Alaska because the rest of the IRA must be planning to attack the pipeline. The remainder of the book is Phoenix looking for the terrorists until they can find them and wipe them out for the final chapters. There's one more engagement with a terrorist scouting party during the search along the pipeline that doesn't really seem very exciting. The action at the end is good but not great. The guys of Phoenix Force are OK here. No false notes. The villains are adequate but not memorable except for the woman terrorist who is just too outrageous and melodramatic to be believable. Anyway, the terrorists provide lots of reasons to hate them and they all die as expected. One note about armaments. In the story Manning uses a Dragon anti-tank weapon but on the cover he is carrying a 90mm recoilless rifle, commonly called a "drain pipe" by the grunts of my generation. This one gets 5 stars. It would have rated 6 stars except for the bit near the end when 4 of Phoenix Force seem to have some kind of temporary stupidity and stand around gawking in the midst of the area of operations so the terrorists can get the drop on them. Really out of character and seemed like a contrivance to allow that woman terrorist to have a mad speech before her bloody end.

"Paradine's Gauntlet" continues in the familiar line of most of the books in the terrorist wars period. Bolan is up against some time constraint and has to rush into situations, reacting always to the villain's plot and trying to stay alive. Not bad but it would be nice to see Bolan once again planning and executing a hit on his own terms and having the elements of surprise and confusion working for him. In this tale the Executioner is up against Paradine from the earlier book, "Double Crossfire". Paradine got the worst of it in the last book and his ego demands revenge. His twisted idea of revenge is hijacking a plane filled with diplomats and demanding that "Phoenix" deliver the ransom alone. Of course Bolan and his team know it's a trap but he goes anyway, leaving a trail of bodies across southern Europe. The set-up is that Paradine gives Bolan points to get to and will observe to make sure he is alone. But since every criminal group in Europe knows about it they all try to ambush and steal the ransom. This leads to much shooting and things going boom. Not of much interest though after the first one. This book introduces the "Laser Wagon", a new and improved version of Bolan's old RV fighting vehicle. It has the same rocketry that became such a crutch during the mafia wars. This book also suffers from an over-abundance of April Rose. She has to follow Bolan against his wishes (of course) and comes to his rescue (of course) and then gets shot. Maybe it's just my old dislike of her whining and sobbing but having her anywhere except at Stony Man Farm really annoys me. The action here was frequent and furious but I didn't believe it very much. The odds were really stacked against Bolan every time and he was being ambushed and surprised. I know the guy can handle long odds but here he almost seemed superhuman. I figure this one is worth 6 stars if you like action. One or two fewer if you prefer plot.

Chinese Puzzle is the first book I've ever read of The Destroyer series of books. Keep in mind that I'm not reviewing the entire series here, just this book. I thought Chinese Puzzle was unsatisfying, uninteresting, uninspiring and unbelievable. The plot was nonsense, the action hardly worth the effort to read off the pages, the characters too obviously calculated to be memorable and unique. There is some prattle about the state of the world but it reads like filler here. Compared the the Remo Williams movie from the 1980s, this is about 10 steps below that film on the entertainment scale. I might rate this book differently if I was an avid reader of The Destroyer series but I'm not, and after this book I don't plan to ever try one again. But reviewing it as just a book, standing or falling on its own merits, this book deserves only 2 stars. I'll be charitable and give it 3 because I rated the Clive Cussler book at 3 stars and that book was longer and therefore even more painful to slog through to the end. If I can say nothing else good about Chinese Puzzle at least I can say it is mercifully short. 3 stars it is.

If you read Bravo Two Zero and are looking for more tales of life in the SAS then you should pick up Immediate Action. This one tells the story of Andy McNab up until the events he related in Bravo Two Zero. Lots of interesting stories about training missions and his work in Northern Ireland and "a certain Latin American country". Without the full-tilt excitement of the first half of Bravo Two Zero or the tension and suspense of the second half, this book still gives a good first hand account of the hard work of soldiering and the characters that make up the world of the SAS. 8 stars worth of reading here.

Bravo Two Zero is a tale well told of a patrol during the Gulf War deep inside Iraq by 8 men from the SAS. These are tough men, well trained and highly motivated. But their patrol finds trouble almost immediately and things start to go bad. Even though the patrol falls apart, the men in the patrol never do. They accomplish something after their stealth is compromised that is truly heroic. The story is told by Andy McNab in a style befitting a soldier and the tone seems right. He comes off as the kind of patrol leader we'd all like to have: smart, alert, dedicated, brave and fair. He heaps praise on his men and puts the light on his own actions for review by himself and the reader. He comes out OK but not perfect. If anybody wants to get an idea of what real patrolling is like without spending four years on active service, this book will give you the feel of what it's all about. The tension and excitement that are always just below the surface on patrol are well shown. (Also the actual way infantry soldiers behave in garrison. Hint: keep your kit locked up tight!) This is a true story but the action scenes here are vividly written and really bring up the adrenaline level without any posturing from the author. A great account of an incredible patrol gone bad and the men who were caught up in it. Definitely a 10 star book.

"Warlord of Azatlan" was a respectable entry in the Able Team series. There was some good action, though not as much as some of the best Able Team books have had. The Able Team guys were interesting but really this is Lyons' story for the most part. The villains were hardly on stage after the first few chapters so hard to judge them. The supporting characters were pretty good. All in all this was a story that I enjoyed for the story as much as the action but it didn't capture me like the best of this series. I figure this is a 7-star book mostly because there were no real weaknesses and they hit all the necessary notes.

"Stony Man Doctrine" is not only a great action story but a tense thriller as well. This is the first of the big books about the Stony Man crew and it sets the highest standards for those later books to strive for. In a word, superb. This book is as good as "War Against the Mafia", and I don't think I can offer higher praise than that. The action is frequent and extremely well written. I thoroughly enjoyed the fine handling of these scenes. One particularly nice touch was showing that there was actual planning and thought by the Stony Man warriors before and during these missions, not just a bunch of guys rushing in with guns blazing. And we got to see Mack doing some sight adjustment during some long range shooting. The villains are actually interesting here as they have sometimes been in the very best of the Bolan books. Their motivations and plans are evil (terrorists are always evil so they make excellent villains) and they weren't just straw men for Bolan and crew to knock over. Even more interesting than the villains, though were some of the supporting players. Maria and David, those two gutsy kids that guided Able Team, were a welcome addition and kept the tension up as I feared for their safety and marveled at their courage. Flor was marvelous in her role assisting Mack and Rafael: I even liked her more here than in her previous Able Team appearance. Great action scenes that just keep the excitement building to a fever pitch, wonderful supporting characters with real personalities and just all around good writing combine to help the Stony Man guys deliver a top notch adventure. I'm giving this one a 10, and that may be one star short of what it really deserves.

The Executioner blasts apart the mountain strongpoint of villains conducting inhuman experiments in this great action story. This one has great action from the first chapter all the way until the end. No complaints with the amount of action scorching the pages of this book nor with the crackling writing of those action scenes. Good stuff here. Bolan seems more like himself than in the previous 3 books and it's nice to have the big guy back. He plans and executes his insertions in this tale just like he used to. With his 44 AutoMag and his Beretta 93-R he packs an M-1 sniper rifle this time around. I really miss the way Don Pendleton used to actually show Mack preparing for his long range attacks with ballistics charts and range calculations; it added a nice touch of realism and made you feel Bolan wasn't just a lucky shooter, that he used skill and experience and worked at it. The villains here are plenty villainous and their plot and deeds are evil. They die by the score. What else can you ask of villains in a Bolan book? The good folks are good and actually even interesting this time around. Nicely done by the writer. I really enjoyed this adventure so I'm giving it 8 stars.

"The Fury Bombs" is a disappointment after the last three books in the Phoenix Force series. This one just wasn't very good. Phoenix Force doesn't do anything McCarter gets captured by some Irish terrorists around page 84 (what did he think, they wouldn't notice him running across the fields toward that deserted house?) And then they don't do anything again until they rescue McCarter on page 118. An action and firepower scene but not much excitement or interest there. That's really about the only action until the final payoff action starting around page 160. Phoenix Force didn't seem very competant in this one. And the threat wasn't very threatening and the book just kind of bored me. And there were technical mistakes but going after them as well would just be pouring it on. I'm giving this one a charitable 3 stars. It probably ought to be 2.

The Invisible Assassins. Hmm, where do I begin? OK, the idea of Bolan taking his war to Japan seemed pretty cool. I think it might be in some other book. Not this one though. The action here is mighty slow indeed. Bolan doesn't shoot anybody until page 101. Yep, that's right. In a book that ends on page 185, The Executioner doesn't shoot anybody until over halfway through the book. And after he shoots that one fella Bolan waits to shoot anybody again until page 150. Now that doesn't mean there isn't stuff going on for long stretches. There is. Just not much of it is action. Or interesting. There is an attempt at a "big battle scene" at the end but it wasn't really very good and the villain was ridiculous. The plot is actually not too bad. Problem is it's the same plot used in the James Bond book "You Only Live Twice" with a little bit of that Bond movie thrown in and a jail cell escape from another Bond film. Once I saw what the plot was, and since there wasn't any action going on, I was bored mightily. Even picking holes in the technical aspects seemed unfulfilling. Bolan seems OK, he is just a bit lethargic here. The other characters are OK too for what that's worth (except that the main villain is pretty much just Blofeld from the book "You Only Live Twice.") High points. Let me think. Oh, Bolan fights with a couple guys on top of a speeding bullet train which was surprisingly not very exciting. A couple other various fights and an attempt on his life (kind of echoing a technique used against the SPECTRE guys in "You Only Live Twice.") I'm giving this one 3 stars because there was some interest in Bolan's early confrontation with the Tanaga character and because there is something cool about Bolan in Japan, even if it was mostly wasted here.

When muslim loonies begin shooting down American aircraft in the skies over Cairo Able Team gets the call to battle. Assisted by their comrade Katz from Phoenix Force as a contact and front man, the men of Able Team bring their own special brand of hell to Egypt and give the gift of martyrdom to hundreds as they search for the terrorists' SAM-7 missiles. The action in this book is as hard, as tense, as exciting as anything in any of these series. Three big battle scenes in this one and another action bit on the roads of Cairo. Lyons, Gadgets and Pol are all really written well in this one and Lyons especially really breathes air. These warriors knock hell out of the bad guys with lots of firepower. The standard Beretta 93-R for Pol and Gadgets and a new modified .45 acp Colt Commander for Lyons with 3-round bursts, silencer capable and extended trigger guard and flip down front grip. Carl also has his beloved Atchisson 12 gauge automatic shotgun along. Uzis, lots and lots of grenades, and some Armburst rockets are the rest of their loadout. And of course they use lots of captured AKs and RPG7s to send loyal terrorists to a better world. The bad guys are easy to hate, they get splattered, blown up and fried with great regularity and in general a good time is had by all. 9 stars for this top-notch action thriller!

Wow! The 4th book in the Phoenix Force series is an action packed adventure with a good plot, interesting badguys and incidental characters and the best writing I've seen in a "men's adventure" book in quite a while. When I read the first 2 Phoenix Force books I was not greatly impressed. The third one was excellent and really showed what can be done with this concept. This book continues that trend and brings the series up to excellent status. I don't think I've read any of Mr. Fieldhouse's work before but I'm certainly looking forward to his many other titles! In "Tigers of Justice" there are Japanese terrorists trying to cause failures at American nuclear power plants. Their motives actually make a kind of horrible sense (especially since the September 11 attack) and their methods are chillingly effective. When the counter-terrorist experts of Phoenix Force take on this challenge the excitement and drama unfold at breakneck pace. All five of the force are good here and Especially Keio who gets a larger share of the action and story then previously. The guy really seems alive and breathing here. Great job of putting blood in the veins of these characters. And the bad guys are also damned interesting. The action is frequent, tense and gripping. What more do you want? Between the firefights and the hand-to-hand there is something to pump up the excitement whatever you like. And even when the book isn't in an action scene it's a damn good read. The scenes between firefights don't just set up another action scene, they actually are interesting from a storyline and character aspect. Some of the political discussions between the group could have gotten a bit preachy but I actually thought it was handled well and added to the characters and the story. I really can't say enough about the plotting and characterizations. The combination of thrilling action, interesting characters, tense and well-placed plotting and really good writing have me tempted to give this one a 10-star rating. So I'm giving in to temptation. I really enjoyed this book and think it's as good as any I've read in the several Executioner series.

Another middling adventure tale in the career of The Executioner. This book has Mack Bolan in Italy tracking down the kidnapped family of an American soldier and laying waste to the ranks of the commie terrorists. One thing to note, this book is only story up until page 162 and then has a feature on weapons from the series with some pictures. Action? Lots of it. It just didn't seem at all believable in this book. I'd have to go back and check (and I really don't want to) but I don't think there was any shot that Bolan fired in this book that didn't hit a terrorist. Even his off-balance, flying-through-a-diving-roll-for-cover shots hit bad guys smack in the middle of their foreheads. One of the few times I've just gone through a Bolan adventure shaking my head. Plot? Simple. Nothing to write home about. Bolan looks for the victims and their abductors; he finds them; he rescues the former and kills the latter. There is some attempt at a story angle involving a traitor among the good guys. Characters? Bolan seemed to be kind of off. Maybe he was just feeling a bit full of himself that day. Leo is on board for the last third of the book and gets involved in the action; that's worth an extra star. The American colonel is forgettable and his family isn't in the book enough to be a factor. The Italian lady agent is OK but I was distracted by how tough she was purported to be. The bad guys are so uninteresting I couldn't tell you who they are. Bolan uses his Beretta 93-R and his AutoMag but also switches to use a Beretta 93-S at the last infiltration. (Mack may want to have Konzaki take a look at the AutoMag because it was firing a lot of 9mm in this story for some reason.) Lots of Uzis and Galil assault rifles and other hardware flinging lead around. If it wasn't for the appearance of Leo and the nice section on "The Guns of Colonel John Phoenix" at the end, this one would get 4 stars from me. As it is I figure it's worth 5.

Able Team is in the Amazon jungle tackling an evil warlord's plans to create nuclear weapons. The team finds willing allies in the local indians. Another very satisfying Able Team adventure. The team is in action up to their eyeballs, lots of lead flying and plenty of stealthy infiltrations. Lyons goes native among their indian allies. The villains are incredibly evil in this book. And there are enough good characters, both good and bad, along the way to add interest. The hardware this time around includes Beretta 93-R pistols for the team, an Atchison Assault 12 automatic shotgun for Lyons (modified by Konzaki) with some nifty armor piercing steel dart slugs, an M-203/M-16 for Pol and a CAR-15 for Gadgets. Lots of Remington pump shotguns and G-3 assault rifles add to the lethality. A lot of the action in this one takes place on or near the river and on boats and except for a bit of confusion in one scene where I couldn't keep straight where the hell Carl was going I really liked the action set in these areas. The last battle in the book is the assault on the warlord's compound and it really kicks the book up into high gear action. Great stuff there. The guys from Able Team racked up another solid adventure here with 8 stars from me.

The Executioner and his Stony Man associates take down a band of Central American terrorists. This book was not exactly bad and not exactly good. It was just OK. The action started off well with a shoot-out and a daredevil chase but then the story kicked in and the action became less interesting. Most of the action in this book actually involves Bolan and Grimaldi flying around. The flying bits are kind of neat but not what I would call gripping. The climactic penetration and battle at the end was unconvincing. This one does get points for having the Able Team guys on hand and even doing a couple things, for Leo making an appearance at the farm and for Grimaldi's work. Without the guest stars this would have been a 4 star book. As it is I'll give it 5.

A vacation for The Executioner in the rugged Idaho wilderness turns a raging river into a hell-ground as Mack Bolan is hunted by an army of hard-men after his head. With a young companion caught up in the action Bolan has his hands full with the business of survival. This book has what I think is the best story of a Bolan book since "Battle Mask" way back in Executioner #3. Even though there were stretches of the book without blazing action the excitement and tension were steady due to the wonderful narrative about Bolan the man and the white-kunckle danger of just running the river. The action is filled with more tension because in this story Mack is unprepared for a war, without his customary arsenal and packing only a small handgun initially. Of course that doesn't stop the warrior from brining destruction and death to the destroyers of men. This book with it's different plot of Mack as the prey and the exploration of his loneliness through the use of his relationship with the young Johnny Kerr really hit on all cylinders. I only have one slight criticism and that concerns the final battle: it didn't seem as well paced and as realistic as the rest of the action and the whole rest of the book. For that one shortfall I'm keeping this one as a 9 star rating.

A cult crime wave has the attention of the government and The Executioner has come to San Francisco to disrupt their campaign of terror and stop their charismatic leader. This tale has Bolan acting alone again and it all takes place in the space of six hours one night in San Francisco. The story opens with a soft probe that turns hard in an instant and from there the action never lets up for more than a few pages. Mike Newton really seems to be in touch with the Pendleton magic for action, tension and drama. The bullets fly, cars are wrecked and burned, bad guys topple and things just generally go boom from the beginning to the end of this tightly paced action-packed story. The cult leader is a good villain and he and his underlings gave the big guy a great battle in this book. Mack didn't just walk through this one blasting things apart. He was tasked hard to come out a winner. I can't really say enough about this one. It was almost like reading one of the old Mafia Wars classics. The author even gets into some of the Bolan philosophy and there's a passage from his journal. I can't think of any reason not to award this one 10 stars.

Mack Bolan is looking for a woman from his past who has been kidnapped by a criminal mastermind. The trail leads from a hot hit on a yacht in Florida to the Libyan desert. I thought this book was OK but not one of the Bolan classics. The story was only OK and the villains never really came alive for me. Bolan seemed to just be knocking over one straw man after another. The action at the opening was good but it was short. After that opening hit on the criminal's yacht there is a long dry spell of no action at all: chapters 3 through 7 are just exposition and getting Bolan into position. Tough to get through. When the action does start up again it moves along relentlessly but curiously I didn't find it compelling. Somehow it didn't seem like Mack Bolan action to me. Still, there is plenty of firepower and plenty of violent action in the last half of the book so some may like this one more than I did. Grimaldi is on hand to lend support in the nick of time as always. OK, one complaint here: when Jack is selecting an aircraft for supporting Bolan he's told by the admiral on the carrier that the Boeing 1041 V/STOL has missiles but is not equipped with cannon or machine guns. Yet, when he later uses this aircraft it has .50 caliber machineguns. I figured either the admiral had no idea what he was talking about or Grimaldi had just hot-rodded the jet a bit. Either way it kind of bothered me. Not a bad read. Just not on a par with the best of Bolan. I give it 6 stars.

I liked this book more than the two previous Phoenix Force stories. Maybe the attack on the World Trade Center and the loss of innocent lives makes me like this book more than I would have 2 weeks ago. I don't know but I found myself very satisfied with the tale of Phoenix Force destroying evil extremist Muslim terrorists. The book starts with some story building, moves into some marginally interesting action for chapters 3, 4 and 5 and then settles into a prolonged search and chase phase. When the action begins again with a night boarding and assault on a terrorist held ship at sea the book starts to really get good. This action sequence moves better and seems more intense than the action earlier in the book. But it isn't until the last action with the attack on the terrorists sub that this book becomes an 8 star effort. From the underwater demolition sequence filled with tension, through the entry into the sub and all the way to the death of the last evil terrorist I thought this was as good an action sequence as I've read in the last 20 or so books. The characters are again well defined and different enough to be easily recognizable and remembered without it seeming staged or conscious. Once again they are a fun group to watch and in this book, for the first time, they really do control the outcome of the story and are the primary protagonists. The villains of this book are evil cowardly Islamic extremist terrorists. These are villains I loved to see destroyed and I make no apology for it. If the rest of this book was as good as chapters 14, 15 and 16 this would be a 9 or maybe a 10 star rating. As it is, I'm giving the 8 stars for those chapters. Without that great action, this would be a 5.

Able Team continues their war on crazies and criminals in their third adventure. This time they infiltrate the private army of a crazy Texas billionaire to bring the killers to two federal agents to justice. The plot takes Able Team to South America so they can be introduced to the wrong crowd as guns for hire and recruited into the private army. After they arrive in Texas they investigate, try to keep from being discovered as federal agents and learn of the bigger plot of the billionaire gone senile. The plot moves a bit slowly and doesn't ever seem to build any tension. The action here isn't bad and it does occur fairly frequently. I don't really enjoy the "infiltrate the bad guys and sneak around undercover" stories in this genre. I think a more direct assault approach is more interesting. But as these things go this one wasn't bad. The authors throw in a few plot complications to keep it from being completely static. The Able Team is OK in this one although I thought Gadgets came off a little under-written. They were the action and heros of this story though so that fills my requirements. Some of the villains and other characters were kind of interesting. Pardee and Furst, Bob Paxton, the free-lance agent Flor, and the young wife of the billionaire all are individuals that I didn't have a hard time remembering. The billionaire himself, Mr. Monroe, was also memorable to me but that was actually a problem. If I'd read this story 15 years ago it I would have accepted Mr. Monroe without a problem. However, I just can't take him seriously now. "In the brilliant sunlight, his hair looked like strands of ceramic, the skin of his tropics-scarred face like translucent plastic molded over a skull." And after a demonstration by his private army: "'Excellent, Monroe nodded, leaning back against the seat." It's Monty Burns! Honestly, after that I couldn't keep from chuckling at every scene he was in, thinking about the evil industrialist from "The Simpsons." OK, for decent action and OK characters this one gets 5 stars. The plot doesn't get any points.

Bolan works to bring down an outlaw intelligence outfit and the renegade American agent who created it. Along the way he meets an old friend and expends many, many rounds of 9mm. Plotwise this was pretty good, with a rival professional and his cadre promising to match up pretty well against The Executioner. Bolan gets wounded early on but it's more of an annoyance than an actual hindrance. The author talks about the wound on nearly every page but it never actually makes any difference in the story. Maybe he just wanted to show how tough Bolan is. The action is OK, but not great. All the talk about "9mm whizzers" in the book doesn't disguise the fact that Don Pendleton's talent for writing action sequences is missing. Not that there isn't quite a bit of action in this tale: there is plenty. And it isn't really too badly done (except when the author's lack of weapon knowledge shows through.) It just isn't all that exciting or gripping. For fans of weaponry note that Bolan uses the Beretta 93R here for the first time. For fans of the old familiar faces there are cameos by April and Hal (of course) as well as Gadgets, Tommy Anders and Toby Ranger. Actually, Toby Ranger is the reason I dropped a star off of this rating. She just annoyed the devil out of me during this book. She constantly addresses Bolan as Captain Cavalry, Captain Quick, Captain Hard, Captain Courageous, Captain Grim, Captain Incredible, Captain Tough, Captain Death, Captain Stubborn, Captain Blitz, Captain Numbers, Captain Wonderful and Captain Fire. The whole thing got very tedious, making me wish he'd waited to rescue her until the end of the book. Overall the book gets 5 stars from me. It's OK but not a first rank outing for Bolan.

Another mission for The Executioner finds him in Germany trying to destroy a terrorist group. He assumes the identity of a corrupt army sergeant to infiltrate their gang and bring them down. The infiltration, so often used by Mack Bolan against the mafia, is a bit different here because he isn't assuming a role that commands respect and trust. Also, there is some action going on during this impersonation. The Zwilling Horde are memorable chiefly because of their leaders, the twins Tanya and Thomas Morganslicht. A nasty and interesting pair of misfit killers. Besides them only Rudi, the big moron who Bolan goads into a fight and mangles handily, is given more than a brief mention. Most of the gang are just targets for Bolan. Mack fights most of this book without the AutoMag and Beretta. Instead he uses a space-age type HK G-ll casesless assault rifle (the book says "assault gun" but I didn't get the sense they actually meant that Bolan had a motorized, low velocity, large bore, direct fire artillery piece firing HE to reduce strongpoints to rubble in support of an infantry advance.) Sounded like an interesting weapon. The action isn't as frequent as in some of the other recent books but there are some good tense scenes with the twins and the hostages. Jack Grimaldi is on board but doesn't have much to do. Likewise April and Hal who are at Stony Man providing information and worrying. I enjoyed this one for the action, the interesting villains, the way Mack goes about his undercover work. It rates 8 stars.

Mack Bolan enters the swamps of Florida to rescue a man from the the wire-enclosed compound of an armed paramilitary group who have a devestating weapon at their command. A girl becomes involved in Bolan's mission and Jack Grimaldi and his helicopter help with fire support and transport. This is actually a pretty good action tale. Problem is it has exactly the same plot as #39- "The New War". Change the location, the affiliation and motives of the bad guys and the reason the hostage is being held and you have this book. Very few differneces in the narrative. Not to say this book isn't worthwhile. I liked it a lot because the action opens up in the first chapter and keeps on to the end without any lengthy stretches of quiet. If you like things to go BOOM frequently you'll enjoy this story. It gets 7 stars (1 less than it got as "The New War) so read it.

Bolan sets off for Algeria to rescue a kidnapped American girl before her scientist father turns over a nuclear prototype to terrorists in exchange for her. The trail leads him to a remote terrorist compound in the deep desert and the titular terrorist gathering. That's the plot. With all those terrorists gathered in one place you just know Bolan is going to use up plenty of munitions. And he does! This book does not disappoint when it comes to the action scenes. They come often and are so well done it reminds me of the best of Mr. Pendleton's action scenes. And that's pretty high praise. The villains are interesting but none of them are worthy of a sequel. Just as well because none of them are going to make it to the back cover. But they're all different enough to be recognizable and they seem believable. That's all I ask of the bad guys. The girl is less interesting but maybe that's because we've seen her so many times before using different names. This book rates a solid 8 stars for action and decent villains. If there was a bit of philosophy worthy of the big guy in here it might get another star. As it is it's a good action book.

Mack Bolan is back in Vietnam on a mission to rescue a man with information about American POWs still being held. He teams up with some Montagnards, gets in a shootout on a river, probes the secret prison set up in an old temple and generally kicks hell out of the Vietnamese army with some timely help from Grimaldi. Not much to say about this one. It was OK and there was quite a bit of action. The story elements involving the Montagnards didn't work for me and Grimaldi's unexpected appearance to save the day was too much of a contrivance but the action was good enough that I enjoyed it anyway. Just one thing: when did Mack become "a fine pilot"? It wasn't ever mentioned before and it wasn't necessary in this story. Mack never got behind the controls of a plane in this book so why say "Bolan himself was a fine pilot"? It took me out of the story and made me question the author's knowledge of the character. This one gets 6 stars strictly for the action.

Bond is involved with recovering a stolen set of plans. The action is in the Fleming Bond tradition: tense but not overdone. Bond's fight with a heavyweight in a hotel room and his pursuit of an enemy up a mountain are highlights. I also really enjoyed the golf game early in the book. In this story Bond has to deal with his personal feelings about some of his associates and tries not to let them influence his thinking. He also has a great partner for the last half of the book, a ghurka soldier. I'm not sure I enjoy the improbable Bond-car making it into the books. This car seems like it belongs to the Bond movies more than the books. Also, when did Bond get up to the top of Everest? Has he kept up his mountaineering to that degree? If you like Bond you'll probably enjoy the Raymond Benson books. This one was a fun read. I'll give it seven solid stars.

Able Team comes to Catalina Island when armed outlaw bikers take over. The biker thugs' demand for gold only gets them lots of lead, compliments of Lyons, Blancanales, Schwarz and some locals. I have to admit straight off that I really liked this book. Lots of action from the beginning to the end. Along with Able Team's penetration of the island and systematic elimination of bikers there's another plot line about a group of island locals who don't give up when their neighbors are taken hostage. This book has great villains: outlaw bikers. If an author can't make a great book out of Able Team blowing away scores of outlaw bikers he should go back to selling real estate. Bikers are the most loathsome villains you can have except for the nazis. And these bikers are so horribly evil that you almost want to cheer every time one gets ushered across to the next world. This time around Able Team gets their armaments from Andrezj Konzaki and he sets them up nicely with enough firepower to do the job. There's a Beretta 93R and it sees quite a bit of action. From the first resistance of some island locals to the biker scum until Able Team cleans up the last of them this story has action from wall to wall. I don't know if an Able Team book can ever get to a 10 star rating but this one came damn close. 9 very well deserved stars.

Able Team is tracking an explosives smuggling pipeline on the east coast when they are mobilized into New York to deal with the terrorist takeover of a skyscraper on Wall Street. Lyons, Blancanales and Schwarz don't waste any time as they hit the streets to get information about the Puerto Rican group claiming responsibility. Pol grabs 3 young members with Lyons' help. While following up a lead, Lyons gets abducted and makes a great violent escape. He and Pol then have a rip-roaring shootout with some baddies in an apartment house. As the Able Team story is unfolding there is also activity in the building where a few employees are trapped on an upper floor. Shades of "Die Hard". Eventually there are developments in the plot that lead Able Team to engage in a tense and well-written surveilance of a suspect. Not a gun battle but a pretty intense bit of action. Everything comes to a climax as Able Team enters the building and takes down the terrorist crazies in a blazing rooftop ambush. This last action scene didn't last a long time but it worked well. I'll confess that one thing I really liked was reading that Lyons "slapped in an eighteen-round magazine" to an M-16. I've read and heard so often about those "twenty-round magazines" that I'd given up hope of anybody ever getting it right. That almost gets the book another star. Able Team is on their own here with only minimal help from Stony Man but with the FBI providing backup. I liked this one and I'm giving it a solid 8 stars.

Some hostages have just been released after ransom is paid to their guerilla captors in Bolivia. The plane they're headed out of Bolivia on is forced down and they are captured again by some Paraguayan guerillas. This makes the Paraguayan military mighty pissed so they send a lieutenant and some troops out to the island where the hostages are being held. The Paraguayan military kills or captures the guerillas and rescues 4 of the hostages, taking all of them to a secret police holding facility. This one had some action at the end. . . Hang on. I forgot about Phoenix Force. Which is easy to do because they have absolutely nothing to do with the plot until they burst into the holding facility in the last 2 chapters to rescue the hostages. Up to that time they just waste a lot of time moving into the country and toward the area where the hostages are held, arriving just in time to witness the Paraguayan soldiers assault the island and remove the guerillas and hostages. Oh, yeah, they do find one hostage that is hurt and has crawled into the brush. For a Phoenix Force novel there sure didn't seem to be much going on with Phoenix Force. Not that they weren't in the narrative a lot. They were. There just wasn't much happening when they were on stage. OK, like I started to say, not much action until the assault on the guerilla camp which was pretty lame and didn't involve Phoenix Force anyway. Then at the end there's the killing of a few hapless guards for their uniforms and the rescue of the hostages from the secret police. Not a lot to keep you interested here. No wonder it took me so long to finish this one. I'm giving it 4 stars. As a book at might rate 5 stars but as a Phoenix Force book it only gets 4: I expect Phoenix Force to at least have some impact on the story before the last 2 chapters. In this book they're mostly ineffectual or inconsequential.

The Phoenix Force has been assembled and immediately sets off for Argentina to locate and rescue seven American hostages. They use some old contacts and open up the season on the terrorist group. Lots of action as the guys split up to bring destruction to several areas of the countryside. The opening scene action isn't as good as what comes later and doesn't actually lead anywhere. There is some detective work going on, mainly by the Argentine government contacts of the Force, but in the end the hostages are located by the oldest and best police method: somebody tells. The search was mainly just an excuse for McCarter, Manning and Encizo to take out some bad guys; it doesn't matter much that it fails. Likewise the subplot involving an old enemy of one team member really only exists to provide yet another chance for a lethal assault to rescue him. But the action that comes from these plot contrivances is pretty good and enjoyable enough that I don't care how the team gets from point A to point B. Still, it would be nice to see the team perform well at something other than whacking people. Maybe as the series moves on. The characters seem interesting and I liked them all. They're different ehough that they may all work out to make me care what happens in the same way I've come to care about what happens to Mack Bolan. This one was a good action yarn and I'm willing to cut the author some slack because he delivered the goods. I think I had a solid 7 stars worth of reading enjoyment.

An Iranian hit team is in the USofA after a former official of Iran in exile. Bolan is sent to stop the hit team and keep the expatriot Iranian alive for one night until he and his entourage can get out of the country. Before the Executioner makes it into the compound he gets involved in action when he thwarts an apparent abduction of a young woman. Surprises and complexities await Bolan as the evening moves on. The target and his companions all have secrets and conflicting motives that might pose additional danger to the big guy. When the attack comes from the hit team it comes hard and fast. The action goes on for a good stretch and is pretty good. It never crackles like the best of Don Pendleton's action writing but it gets the job done. One problem with the narrative: Bolan gives his Beretta to a lady in chapter 9 so she can defend herself. He doesn't see her again until the end of the book but in chapter 11 "the silent Beretta was in Bolan's big paw before there was time for the conscious mind to send the signal." WOW! That's some draw the big guy has developed! Maybe he was using "the force" or something. Whatever it was that happened it bothered the heck out of me and drew me out of the narrative. The plot wasn't too interesting but it did the job and there were some interesting quirks in the characters so no complaints there. The action at the front end was OK and the hit squad attack was pretty good. The last action at the airstrip was not very satisfying and seemed like a pale imitation of something that had been done better by Mr. Pendleton. The last plot point was resolved in a manner that was just a big offstage cheat. I'd have bought it if there had been some indication earlier but the attempt to spring it on the reader just didn't work. April and Hal were in support at the farm and later in a limited role on site. Their scenes together didn't seem to really work. But the author does bring up a good point: doesn't Hal have a home and family to go to? All in all it was worth reading but not in the top tier of series entries. I'm giving this one 6 stars.

A personal mission for friends takes Bolan to St. Paul to look for a serial rapist and murderer. A gun-toting reception when he arrives leads him to believe there's more to the case than there seems. A good opening pursuit and action scene is followed by Bolan's rescue of a lady and then some detective work by the big guy. The action doesn't heat up again until the last showdown. Pol and Toni are involved after Toni is attacked. The scenes with Toni are actually really good. Pol seems a bit out of it, but then who wouldn't under the circumstances? None of the other characters are terribly interesting but they don't annoy or seem false either. I'm giving this one 6 stars for some nice writing of Toni's character, some decent Bolan philosophy and a nice opening scene. A bit more action in the middle might have gotten this one another star.

Mack Bolan's second mission as Col. John Phoenix, aka Stoneyman One, starts in Beverly Hills where he thwarts an attempt on a man involved in some violent struggles for Armenian people. The plot thickens with the addition of Russian supported Turkish terrorists, drug production and smuggling and a formidable terrorist called Paradine. This story opens with some intense action and never lets up on the throttle. Bolan takes on the terrorists on their homeground and gains a few allies along the way. Though there is some time spent on the motivations of the characters and the cowardice and dishonesty of the terrorists this book is about action, action and more action. And the action here is very well done. This is a Mack Bolan mission with no help from the other regulars except as support at Stonyman Farm. If you like to see the big guy burning a lot of powder and blowing things up this will be your kind of book. I'm giving it 8 stars for action.

After Mack Bolan's personal war against the mafia has ended he begins a new phase of his career as Col. John Phoenix in The New War. He has gone into the Colombian jungle to rescue a missing American agent with urgent information. What he finds is more than expected and involves him in a lot of action on his first mission as Stony Man One. This story has a lot of action. If you like Bolan in firefights and soft probes this book will be right up your alley. Lots of good narrative of Bolan doing the recon and taking the measure of the bad guys' site. Then when he goes into action there is barely time to catch your breath. Most of the regulars are at Stony Man Farm for this one and aren't involved except for Grimaldi who hightails it down to help out the big guy. Jack gets in on the final assault on the enemy camp and gets to burn a lot of powder. Even though there is only one location for the action I thought this was a very enjoyable tale. Bolan was doing a lot of stuff here, as opposed to some of the previous stories where he just impersonated a mafia black ace for 100 pages. This one flowed right along. Eight stars worth of action.

In the final book of Mack Bolan's mafia wars the Executioner is in New York to deliver a coup de grace to the mob's power structure. On this last mile Bolan uses his wits, guts and charisma as well as his gun to take down the man who would be king. The story begins as Bolan returns to the city as "Omega" the black ace from his Command Strike mission. He works with Leo from the inside to sow the seeds of distrust within the New York families. Then the Executioner moves into action to take down a mob business but finds an innocent there that changes the game. The action kicks up several notches with a wild fight in Central Park during a daring pursuit. When Bolan moves to the mafia's central headshed to orchestrate the endgame the stakes get higher and the tension mounts. This time the narrative doesn't go flat while Bolan impersonates a black ace. Pendleton knows how to bring the tension up to a fever pitch and really turns all the screws down tight. When the final action kicks off with a penthouse firefight things move quickly. The end of this book also contains the end of the Executioner's war against the mafia and it's handled very well. This is a memorable occassion for anyone who has read all the preceding 37 books and Mr. Pendleton makes it even more memorable with some great storytelling and character moments. Mack Bolan is the damnedest guy, and Pendleton makes it work as this warrior says good-bye to this chapter in his life. I really liked this story. Everything seemed to be working correctly for Mr. Pendleton this time around. Leo and Hal were right on target and even April Rose was a pleasure to know this time. There is great action at the front and at the back but not at the very front or the very back: this book is telling a story, much like the first book in the series did 37 volumes before. I can't think of anything I would change about this book so I'm giving it a full 10 stars.

As Mack Bolan's "second mile" nears its end he makes his way to Baltimore to deal with the mafia presence there. After an opening with Bolan greeting Leo and with only a reference to some action that occurs offstage, the story bogs itself down in another one of those long "Bolan impersonates a black ace" sequences that continues until nearly the end of the book. In some of the earlier books in the series Bolan would actually do something before launching into one of these impersonations, and frequently he'd do something while he was pretending to be a mafia bigshot. In this book he just walks around pretending and spying, kind of just treading water while the plot elements are trotted out one by one. After Bolan ends his impersonation he engages in two bits of action, the first as he assaults a ship and then another when he returns to level the mafia hard site he had infiltrated. The ship attack wasn't very interesting but the hard site assault had some of the old Pendleton excitement. Unfortunately that was about the only place that old excitement could be found in this book. There is an appearance by one of the Ranger girls and Grimaldi is on hand also at the end. April Rose still seems like a wet banket and a sobbing wimp to me but she wasn't as annoying here for some reason. I am beginning to wonder if Mr. Pendleton had a hard time writing women from the inside who weren't tough and capable. One thing that did take me out of the narrative, pulling me outside the story to wonder about the telling of the story, was Leo's musing about his feelings for Mack Bolan as they left the hard site together. "Not that he wanted to lie down between the sheets with the guy, nothing like that for Christ's sake. But the love was there, and Leo was not all that sure that he would NOT lie down with the guy . . . if Mack Bolan turned out to be a little bit queer." Huh? What was Pendleton thinking? Don't know. Maybe he also had a hard time writing Leo from the inside this late in the game. Whatever the case, a picture like the one conjured up there I do NOT need in an Executioner story. I just didn't get enough fun out of this book to rate it any higher than 4 stars. If there had been a great (or even any) opening action scene it would rate another star. If Bolan had done something more than impersonate someone else to get info, a la Mission Impossible, for the middle 2/3 of the book it would rate another star. As it is I thought there were better uses I could have made of those several hours of my life, and I've never thought that before after reading one of Mr. Pendleton's books. So this one gets 4 stars, and that may be one star too generous.

The Executioner takes a trip to Florida to check out trouble on the smuggler trails. What he uncovers is a plot straight out of the pulps. The action in this book comes in two bits: the Bolan surprise move against some mobmen planning to take down some dope-smuggling kids that occurs in the first chapter; and Bolan's penetration and hit on the island compound in chapters 17, 18 and 19. The action is OK, there just isn't much of it. Unfortunately, what fills the long middle of the book is the plot about a mafia construction program to create a huge system of, well, you wouldn't believe me if I told you. And that's one of the problems: the plot just doesn't seem believable, even in the Mack Bolan world where all these stories take place it doesn't seem believable. That took me right out of the book. As Joe-Bob would say, there's way too much plot gettin' in the way of the story. Another problem with this story is the women. April Rose has developed into something of a pain. Doesn't she ever get tired of crying, whining and acting childish? Doesn't Mack ever get tired of it? Apparently not because he continues to fall in love with her which I can't say I understand at all. The other woman who is a problem here is Jean Russell. She inserts herself into the action at the most decidedly inappropriate times and happily puts herself and Bolan in danger, apparently because she just can't stand to be on the sidelines. Very April-esque. OK, one good thing about this story is that Jack Grimaldi is playing a big part again. The guy works well as a junior partner with Bolan. All together, I think this one was worth 5 stars. It was kind of entertaining in spots. I'd have given it another star if it hadn't been for the always-whiney April Rose.

The Executioner is back in top form in this thriller that's packed with lots of story and enough action to keep it all humming. The plot unfolds as Bolan takes a sidetrip to New Mexico to follow up some leads related to his last blitz across southern California. This mission turns out to be a monster. Bolan opens with a raid on a little mafia turkey factory and his follow-up takes him into several confrontations with the mob and their allies as he unravels their plan. He hits them hard at their HQ but largely takes them apart with more finesse than firepower. An old nemesis is on hand. But so is Grimaldi and of course Hal and April are involved, though April is not in the thick of the action this time. The War Wagon makes only a non-fighting appearance and Bolan and Grimaldi take on the enemies without the RV. This story isn't packed full of firefights but the plot was so good I didn't miss it. Bolan did some good thinking and musing here also and that always ups the scale at least a point for me. I can't find anything to criticize in this book and I really liked it so I'm giving it the full 10 stars.

The second mission in Mack Bolan's "second mile" against the mafia, his wrap-up to the mafia wars, finds him in foggy Los Angeles to sniff out the California Concept. The action begins with a hit and rescue, continues when Bolan thwarts a mob hit and takes the heat to the survivors in their lair, takes out a mob front security office and a staging area. The big action scene here is The Executioner's penetration and hit of the center of the new mob thrust. Good detailed account of Bolan's move into the area though the account of the hit itself is a bit short. April Rose gets a little deeper into the man and his war, and he finds himself falling in love with her. She complicates his thinking and his mission but seems to be on her way to being a good partner. This one had a good deal of action but only the big penetration episode was truly memorable for me, the rest being good solid Pendleton average. Still damn good stuff though! There was some attempt to get a little into the big guy's head using April Rose but the scene of her reading from his copy of Don Quixote just didn't click for me. I actually found myself wondering if Don needed to boost his word count for the editor. This one wasn't quite up to what I enjoyed in the previous story but it was a good read. All things considered I thought this book gave me a good 8 stars worth of reading entertainment. And that's not too shabby.

The first step on The Executioner's second offensive against the mafia kicks off with a patented Bolan sniper hit in this great book. Bolan is out to ruin the mob in the heartland and he moves fast and hard to do it. This book finds the big guy with a partner, a lady fed supplied by Hal to look after the war wagon and its intel. Does she have what it takes to survive in the hellgrounds? Bolan has to find out quickly. And so does she. After the opening hit Bolan moves to a penetration of a mob site, dons his mafia disguise to move things along, and finally engages a huge mafia force in their lair as he tries to secure his mission objectives and save his new partner. The action is good, especially in the last quarter of the story when they arrive at the mafia retreat. Nice to see Bolan going EVA and taking the fight in close for a while and use the .460 Weatherby rather than just launch rockets this time. The interplay between Bolan and April gives Pendleton a chance to get some more of the big guy's philosophy into the story, which is always a sign of a great Executioner book for me. If the rest of the six-days-war books are this good I'm going to be handing out a lot of tens. I'll start right here: ten stars to this well paced adventure.

Bolan hits Tennessee after a summons from Hal. He gets involved in the fight against encroaching mafia tentacles waged federal law undercover style but with high stakes: 2 old friends and fellow soldiers in the war on crime are missing. This episode finds the big guy playing things with a bit more subtlety and caution than usual and so doesn't have the blitzing against criminal locations normally seen. Not to say there isn't any action, it's just more soft insertions than hard, jarring attacks. And the war wagon is nowhere to be seen, so no relying on long-distance rocketry! The plot itself isn't much though there is some back story and overview. Mostly it's the Executioner working to find the 2 lost feds and not blow the top off their existing undercover operation. Good supporting cast here but they really haven't very much to do with the action except for Grimaldi. This is Mack Bolan going about his business with a bit more circumspection than usual, but with very satisfying results. In spite of the lack of big-hit action scenes or any real nail-biting tension I really had fun with this book. I think it deserves a solid 8 stars.

The Executioner has come to Arizona following the heroin connection from Cleveland. What he finds is an explosive situation with drugs the least of his worries. Rival mob factions, some faces from his army days and a confused but loyal daddy's girl combine to make this mission difficult for Bolan. The plot has a lot going on with everyone's motivations in play throughout the book. Lots of action with Bolan hitting against 2 sides of a mob dispute to keep either from getting the upper hand while he tries to figure out what's at stake. The big guy encounters some faces from his Vietnam days but these faces are on the other side. Nicely done angle there. Not much of a glimpse into the workings the inner man of Mack Bolan but he is faced with some bitter choices and has to make some tough decisions. I got a full 8 stars of reading enjoyment out of this one. It's another action packed Don Pendleton special.

Mack Bolan is staking out the Cleveland mob when things turn hot. After he rescues a couple of intended victims he tackles the mafia in several good action scenes. Lots of gunplay in this one. Bolan encounters a girl who isn't exactly what she claims to be and has motives he can only guess at. She complicates his mission and his thinking. Her opposition causes him to try to explain his private war and its bloody conduct. Some good Bolan thinking here. The plot seems kind of weak but then, it's all about the action and the man so that isn't much of a problem and there is enough plot to move things along from one fight to another with reasonable plausibility. I felt this one gave a good 8 stars worth of enjoyment.

Bolan is working against the New York mafia families from the inside. Lots of intrigue and a formidable enemy in this one. Leo and Hal are on hand as well as a lady from a previous adventure. It's a bit light on gun-play though with only one real hellfire Bolan scene. A fire mission against a family palace is followed by the Executioner's work to pit the New York families against each other. There is some decent action here and a showdown with the big enemy is pretty exciting. Honestly, I don't know exactly why I enjoyed this story so much. It just seemed to click in its pacing, plot and action. It feels like 7 stars worth of enjoyment to me so that's what I'm rating it.

Some mafia headhunters are in Pittsfield after Leo Turrin. But who sent them? Mack Bolan is back in his hometown where his war began to help out a valuable ally who is also his best friend in the world. The ation starts off with Bolan acting to thwart the head party's play against Leo. A move against a mob ambush and a fire mission against the enemy hard site continue the action while the plot weaves around some intrigue in the highest offices of the mob. Bolan infiltrates the enemy camps as a "black ace" but after all the maneuvering he has to settle things with an assault on the hard site and a confrontation with the mastermind of the move against Leo. Leo and Hal are both in this one quite a bit. For once Bolan does not have a teenage bimbo shaking her butt at him. What it does have though is Bolan thinking about the nature of savages and what makes a man and a woman tick differently. Good stuff. This one could have had another star if the action had been a bit more detailed. As it is, I'll give it 8 stars as a satisgying Bolan adventure.

Bolan takes his war to Atlanta and the surrounding towns. Why is never exactly spelled out. I suspect is was a good way to work in more southern slang to go along with the embarassing CB radio stuff. It's obvious that Pendleton wrote this during the CB radio craze of the mid seventies, a time when the song "Convoy" was a hit on radio and pop culture was thick with "breaker breaker" and "10-4", everybody had a "handle" and "Smokey and the Bandit" was considered grand entertainment. If you can read this book without cringing you're a better man than I am. The plot: I still don't know what the heck was going on in this one. The action: a good opener with Bolan's hit on a trucking center. Another good bit when he breaks up a mob ambush. The last firefight seemed to be thrown together as an afterthought. The other characters: Reynolds might have been OK except for all that CB trucker talk. Jennifer was less than memorable. Ecclefield was OK. Domino and his crew of "black aces" were a bit hard to believe in. This review is better than most of this book deserves. Some of the action is good but there are long stretches between the good bits. This one gets only 4 stars.

The Executioner decides to shake the mob away from the swinging town of Acapulco before they can move in and take over the local crime scene. He starts with a ong range kill mission, moves to get the local strong-man's attention, and leaves destruction as he goes. There isn't a lot of the typical Bolan big hit action in this one, instead there is some spectacular stunt type activity from the big guy. Not bad but some more gunplay instead would have snared this story another star. None of the folks Bolan encounters will be unforgettable to the reader. The action is OK but not top notch Pendleton. All in all while I enjoyed this tale I thought it was only a 7 star effort.

I debated about whether this book was a 9 star or a 10 star story but I enjoyed this one so much I just have to give it the full 10 stars. Bolan has been lured to Colorado and set up for a kill by some crack military types. He can't run, he won't negotiate. What else can a man like Mack Bolan do but take the fight to these soldiers? The opening battle between the Executioner and some persuing strike force soldiers is well done. Most of the action in this one is Bolan against these well disciplined troops in the Rockies and it all goes off like a block of C4! Besides the explosive action sequences this story has lots of Bolan recons, probes and intelligence gathering. All very tense and exciting stuff also. Add in Leo and Hal and a plot that involves far more than the mob's attempt to get The Executioner and you've got yourself 10 solid stars of entertainment. I loved this one.

When the mafia tries for a big takeover in Quebec, Mack Bolan comes to town to bury their plan and their soldiers. The action starts off smartly with a Bolan hit on a minor mobster's nightclub and a pursuit by another crew. Then plot and suspense take over for most of the middle half of the book. But when the action picks up again for the finale it kicks out all the stops and roars in like a hurricane. Along the way the Executioner has to balance some new alliances and try to sort out everybody's loyalties. Leo is on hand for most of the action and the pairing of the big guy and the undercover cop adds some more tension to this story. A good mix of hellfire action and intrigue. This one was very enjoyable and I think it deserves 9 stars.

The Executioner is invited to St. Louis by his old death squad pals and they team up to foil a mob powerplay. From the opening hit on the capo's mansion this one packs quite a wallop. Action continues with the team's hit on a mob head party and moves on to their very hard hit against the head party's base. They wrap things up with an ambush of the prospective new capo and all his underlings. Moving the action along in this story is a different kind of mission objective for Bolan and the plot works pretty well. Great action in this one with that Pendleton touch. There are some familiar faces on board and a new police officer who is written as a living man. And Mack also deals with the business of his personal life. This one is a solid 9 star tale in my book.

When The Executioner takes his war on the mob to Hawaii he gets involved in a bigger plot and teams up with some old allies to finish off the bad guys. Bolan opens with hits on local mob bosses and follows the trail to another organization with deadly plans. A soft probe, a hard hit and more action in the aftermath and the chase, a clash at the beach and a final assault on the main location provide plenty of excellent action. Add in the chance to see so many familiar faces and it works magic with the Executioner formula. The only thing keeping this one from getting to 10 stars is the lack of truly great moments of insight about the big guy and his thoughts. But everything else is here and thrills are guaranteed. A solid 9 star tale from Mr. Pendleton.

When Bolan catches a hint of mafia smell in Seattle he starts snooping around. Deciding that big things are going on he takes action to foil a mob plot aiming at. . . world domination? Couldn't tell. There are some women encountered but they don't really serve any useful purpose and aren't written as very interesting people. There's a mafia sponsored hard force of 200 guns led by some ex-army combat guru who is supposed to be a threat to Bolan but they never actually seem to be much of a threat. Boy, do I miss those Talifero brothers. This one opens quietly and has a little action at a warehouse that doesn't seem to click. Lots of plot development with those not-too-interesting women and then some action but only of Bolan running. Finally a good action scene with Bolan invading the penthouse HQ of that ex-army hard guy. This scene works and it's just about solely responsible for the 5 stars. This story winds up with some surprisingly uninteresting action when Bolan blows up the mob's secret island base. 5 stars here. And that may be one star too many. Just not a very interesting or memorable book.

Another mission for the Executioner takes him to New Orleans where an aging capo is on the way out. Bolan has a plan to topple everything and prevent another family from moving in. Things are complicated by the appearance of a classy lady and the involvement and disappearance of the two surviving Death Squad members. This one started out well with a Bolan hit on a mob cash convoy, then a visit to a mafia lieutenant's home. After some plot development Bolan made an attention getting hit at some invading hoods. More plot development, then some action in the French Quarter during the build up toward Mardi Gras. The big action sequence at the end was not as good as the usual Pendleton thrill ride. There's a new customized war wagon introduced here and it is very sweet. The rockets were cool, maybe a bit far out, but I just couldn't imagine a RV assaulting a mafia hard site without laughing. We're also missing the view inside the big guy's soul in this one. So the opening convoy hit, the hit at the invading mob leader and some other action get this one 5 stars. Not a bad read, just not in a class with the usual thrilling Bolan stories from Pendleton.

The Executioner's plan for a hard hit on the Detroit mob's hard site takes a strange turn when he encounters an old friend in trouble. One of the lady cops from Bolan's Vegas mission is looking for one of her partners. With mob crews pouring into town and the cops after him The Executioner continues to look for the missing girl who may be in the clutches of the mafia's white slavers. The opening hit is pure Executioner excitement and lasts for a good while. There is a bit of action in the middle and then Pendleton pours it on for a roaring finish with action and evasion in a desperate mission to locate the lady. Good sections between the action here with Bolan again doing a lot of thinking about his place in the cosmic scheme and what it all means. Pendleton does this very well and makes these as important to the story of Mack Bolan and the high-speed acion scenes. The cops in this book are particularly well written and they seem to be actual living men rather than just obstacles for Bolan to avoid. This book is another very solid 8 star tale. With just one more action scene this one would have had one more star.

This is another solid action-packed story in the saga of Mack Bolan, the Executioner. Lots of action in this one and a return by Jack Grimaldi plus Leo and Hal make appearances. Bolan has sniffed out something in Texas and has come for a look. During the opening hit on an isolated mob location he makes a discovery that leads him to unraveling a twisted plan as big as Texas. His appearance draws a special crew of mafia Bolan hunters to the state but he makes his presence felt and blitzes the mob's plan to failure. The action in this one runs throughout the book with no lulls and it's classic Pendleton. The good, or the semi-good, folks Bolan encounters aren't quite as interesting as some in the past and we don't get too close to Bolan's inner man in this one. That keeps this book from getting more than 8 stars. But the action works very well here.

Wow! A refreshing thriller that really hits the spot. This one was particularly fun coming right after I suffered through Sicilian Slaughter. Maybe I'm rating it too high due to comparison. But Mack Bolan's character is again true to form and this book makes great use of that. Bolan begins this tale wounded and just trying to get out of New Jersey after the action in Panic In Philly. (A few places in this book there were efforts made to try to alter it to fit in after Sicilian Slaughter but it's clear from the narrative and Bolan's wounds that this story is the continuation of the series after Panic In Philly.) He's got the Taliferi on his trail and after fighting off his closest pursuers he is rescued and patched back together by a friendly farmer and his sister. Of course, anyone who helps The Executioner is in danger and that is certainly true here. The Taliferi threat to Bolan's new friends is what drives the last two thirds of this story. The great Pendleton action is here in spades, from the opening battle by a hurting Executioner, through some bloody skirmishes with the Mafiosi after him and on to the final fierce battle against one of the Talifero brothers and his underlings at a hard site. Great stuff that brings you to the edge of your seat. Besides the action we also get some deep looks inside the big guy and some very touching scenes with his two rescuers. This is the other part of a Mack Bolan story and the way Don Pendleton does it, it's every bit as interesting as the action. I'm giving this one a perfect score of ten well deserved stars. Welcome back, Mack! I missed you!

Sicilian Slaughter. Where do I begin? Well, let me say that I'm reviewing this book as a part of The Executioner series featuring Mack Bolan. Here goes. OK, this book was NOT written by Don Pendleton. I'd heard about this book and I'll admit I was prepared for a pretty awful book. Unfortunately I wasn't prepared enough. This book was even worse than I expected. First, whoever that big guy in the black suit was it was not Mack Bolan. Reading this book is like reading a book about a guy who was doing a very bad impersonation of The Executioner. Bolan's character doesn't match up with the way he was in the previous 15 books by Don Pendleton. In Sicilian Slaughter Mack Bolan is written as some kind of cold-hearted, mean, dickhead who goes around killing people. Also, Bolan willingly endangers a young girl uninvolved and ignorant of his mission or danger to further his mission objectives. This seems completely out of character. By the time "Bolan put the cold wet muzzle of the .44 Automag in the [cop's] ear" we know we've left Pendleton's creation far behind. This Bolan also shoots himself up with morphine because he's been wounded and "he could not hope to function, keep his senses clear and alert while fighting such intense pain!" Huh?!?! He's worried about keeping his senses clear so he shoots up? That doesn't sound like the bolan I saw in the previous books. And his willingness to engage the enemy on a crowded dock from a ferry seemed wreckless and not at all Bolanesque. Leo Turrin also makes an appearance early in the story but he also seems to have been replaced by an adolescent boy impersonator. There's a lot of action going on in this book but it's not written well enough to be either believable or incredible. It's all a bit overplayed, like most of the rest of the narrative: we're told how tough the hero is, in great detail and with much swaggering. One thing you miss here besides Don Pendleton's handling of the Bolan character is just the man's writing. Sicilian Slaughter is a longer book than the previous books, with 36 lines of type per page to the 33 in the others (yes, I counted.) Unfortunately that means this book runs about one twelfth longer than the previous books and in this case that's a bad thing. Summary: Beware. If you've never read one of Don Pendleton's Executioner books you may not find as much to dislike in this one. But then, if this were your first introduction to the series you might never read another one. I'm giving this one a single star. I really didn't enjoy it as an Executioner book. I don't think I'd have bothered finishing it though if it weren't part of the series that I've decided to read in order.

Bolan works his magic from the inside on the Philly mob and tears them up. This book starts off with lots of action including a big hit on a mafia hard site. After Bolan's narrow escape from the law he infiltrates the Philly family citadel posing as a powerful enforcer. Once Bolan got inside the action slowed down for the rest of the book until about the last 6 pages. There's a lot of intrigue and supsense in those chapters though as Bolan works to bring death and destruction to the mafia in Philadelphia by pitting them against each other. The story finishes off with a nice action scene but it's not one of the better ones. The great opening action and the good tense plot developments in the middle earn this one 7 stars. I almost went to 8 stars but this one just missed that plateau.

First off I'll say I may like this book a little more because I live here. That said it's still a damn entertaining tale. Bolan comes to San Diego at the request of Gadgets and the Politician who return after their first appearance in Death Squad. They're out to help a former comrade from their army days who may be in mob trouble. Things get tricky from the very beginning and the "Able Team" has to make a finesse play to open things up in the boder town. But even the finesse of the Executioner carries plenty of punch. The action begins small with some probes but things go boom as the plot unfolds and everything comes to a head in a dessert shootout. I'm giving this one 8 stars. I'm tempted to tack on another star just because so much of the action happens within about 5 miles of my house but I'll resist. 8 stars it is.

When the Executioner moves on the mob in Washington he uncovers and then unravels a plot to put the government in the mob's grip. Bolan's search for the mastermind of this plot moves the story along and there is genuine surprise at the end when all the players are identified. The unknown adversary aspect of the plot and the interactions Bolan has with the people he encounters contribute nearly as much to the fun of this book as the action does. Starting off with a classic Executioner move against a mob hit and a daring escape and then building to a hard hit on the plotters' headquarters the action here keeps pounding away in time with the plot. My only complaint is that many of Bolan's hits against the mob were only mentioned briefly and not detailed as part of the action. With a few more action scenes or one more big action set piece this one would have rated another star. As it is it's still a good solid 8 star adventure.

Another 10 star effort from Don Pendleton, this story unfolds in Boston as Mack Bolan shakes the town apart to make the mob give him back Val and Johnny after learning in the previous book that they had been snatched. Breathtaking action opens with an Executioner hit (or 3!) to get the mafia's attention and continues on an ever increasing arc to to final confrontation. This one has everything: small hits against the mob's operations and big hits against their hard sites, chasing mob torpedoes to their doom, tension filled page after page with the big guy as he tries every trick in his bag to get the two loved ones back alive and unharmed, and some real emotion at the end. Besides Val and Johnny there are returns by Leo and Hal and some of the other cops from past books. If you want action and lots of it but with some drama and emotional content this book delivers. A solid 10 stars.

When Bolan hits the mob in San Francisco he stumbles onto hints of a bigger enemy. The Executioner hits the mob hard in a well paced story with lots of action. This story has some of the patented Pendleton action scenes that bring you right into the path of the bullets, particularly during a hard hit on Nob Hill mansion. And once again there are some folks Bolan meets that may or may not be allies when push comes to shove. And Bolan gets news that sends the series action off in a personal direction for the next book. A good 8 stars for the continued growth of Mack Bolan as a man struggling with what he fears he may become and what he regrets giving up. And for some great action in one of my favorite cities.

In a continuation of the action from the previous story in the series, Vegas Vendetta, Bolan heads to the islands. In the finest Executioner tradition this book starts off with a bang (many, many bangs actually, and quite a few booms also) with a hot reception for the big guy. With the mob interfering with his blitz, Bolan has his hands full just surviving. Lots of great hair trigger action in this one from the wild opening to the tense closing hit. And along the way Mack Bolan meets some interesting new allies who make the book live a little larger in their own way. One of the things I notice about these stories now are the way Pendleton wrote his action scenes so that I believe them. After the fact I may look back and think the action was implausible, but when it's hot and heavy and the bullets are zinging by I am completely in the moment and I buy every bit of it. Yeah, those are long odds against the Executioner. But it seems perfectly reasonable to me that he can survive and even come out on top. Great stuff. This story gets a very solid 9 stars for the thrilling action and the way Bolan interacts with the good people.

Bolan blitzes sin city in the dessert. This book moves along quickly from the opening Bolan hit on a lonley mountain road at night where he encounters a familiar face to the bullet filled finish in a Vegas casino. The action is well done again and one Bolan hit in particular in the middle of the story is a real gem. The Talifero's are after Bolan this time and things heat up when they come to town followed by a planeload of federal Bolan hunters. With his brains, guts and skills - and some help from new friends- Bolan turns the mob inside out and uses their weaknesses against them yet again. Another enjoyable action packed adventure in this series that rates 8 stars.

This a solid entry in the Mack Bolan series that has great action at the outset but suffers a bit from a slow middle. The Executioner is in Chicago to take the war to the mob in their power center. This story gets started off with a bang with a Bolan hit and continues with some great action during a daring escape. That episode is a great study in Bolan tactics, preparation and improvisation. A standout. Too much plotting and planning after the breathless action in the first third of the book for my tastes. As Joe Bob would say "there's way too much plot gettin' in the way of the story". We do get quite a good glimpse again of what goes on inside the big guy's head and again we see how much the commitment to his private war costs him psychically. There's a grand-slam of a finish and Bolan wins a small victory. I'm giving this one 7 stars for the great action in the front end of the book and for some of the glimpses of Mack Bolan's personal inner struggle. With a little more action in the middle third this one would get another star.

I could just make this a one word review: Wow! But that would be too easy. And this book, the best of the series since War Against the Mafia, deserves more. Action dominates this story with Bolan in the thick of it from the first paragraph to the last. Along with the great action you get Bolan doing a lot of thinking and feeling and it all works to produce a thriller of a hell-ride. I'm stamping this one with a 10 star review. It deserves every bit of it.

In Assault On Soho the Executioner is once again on track with a quick adventure in London cramming shootouts, recons, and narrow escapes with intrigue and a genuine mystery. After Bolan enters England he gets involved with a girl of unknown loyalties and her friends. The mob has come to England in force to get Bolan and the cops are laying for him. So what else is new? A couple interesting characters and Bolan's uncertainty about them plus his being off his own turf combine to give this story something unique. A solid 8 stars for this one. I enjoyed it almost as much as Miami Massacre. Pendleton gets back in the groove and is running true to form.

Although I enjoyed this book and thought the action was great, for some reason I didn't like it as much as Miami Massacre, the previous book. There are some highpoints in the action: at the airport in chapter 1 and during Bolan's raid on the house of joy. A couple interesting characters appear, including a mysterious lady who remains mysterious to the end. Maybe this one was less interesting to me because the police chasing after Bolan in this one never really had any part of the story. Nothing was seen from their point of view and they just seemed to be convenient obstacles rather than motivated characters in their own right as they were in the 4 previous books. Bolan does a bit of soul searching here and even shows a little weakness (which costs him.) He learns a lesson and teaches the French mob some lessons in return. This one gets only 6 stars from me. Nothing is really wrong with this book. It just didn't give the same excitement as Miami Massacre or Battle Mask.

Another great action packed but character driven adventure for Mack Bolan. Bolan faces some smarter enemies here and has to use all his talent and skill and rely on some timely assistance. The Executioner saga continues to develop as links with the police and feds and some new friends are strengthened. Death again hits home for Bolan and he returns it to the mob with interest. His weaponry (except for the Luger, odd choice that one) is kicked up a notch here. I particularly enjoyed the scene where he thwarts the mob ambush. Long odds there are overcome by swift decisive action, cool thinking, instinct, skill and a little help from his friends. I could almost feel the whisper of air as the bullets zinged by! 9 stars here also and it looks like Pendleton is in the groove.

In his third book Mack Bolan finishes up the job he started back in the second, taking on what's left of the L.A. mob. After the Death Squad adventure he's back on his own and seems to be more effective than ever. The plastic surgery bit was well done and made a nice plot element. The other characters are interesting and don't seem to just be there for Bolan to have somebody to either shoot or avenge. The Executioner is shown to be capable and explosively violent. His anger at the actions of the mob and the way he carries out his revenge hit were a change from the cool professionalism he had displayed. I liked it. I felt this was a solid 9 star book. I actually liked this one more than "Death Squad".

The second book in the Executioner saga makes another great read. The action was fast and furious, the character of Bolan was again well drawn and interesting, not at all stereotypical or cardboard. The cops were handled well also and had some great motivations. Some of the Death Squad I thought was done well but some seemed to be made unbelievably quirky just so the reader could easily start telling them apart. The death squad idea worked well though and it was a great ride while it lasted. I'm rating this one only 9 because even though I thought it was great I just didn't get the same bang out of it as I did from "War Against the Mafia."

Just finished this book (in less than a day) and I can't wait to read more. This book has great action sequences and a great lead character in Mack Bolan. But there are also some nicely drawn supporting characters, a couple of pretty tense moments and at least one pretty neat surprise in the tale. I had read several of The Executioner series during the 70s and early 80s while in the army but hadn't picked one up again until now. Wish I hadn't waited so long! If this book doesn't get you hooked into the series then I don't know what could. Get it, read it and start living large!