Karl S.

Except for a few dated references, here's a 15 year old book that reads like it could have been written yesterday. Some good work by McQuay, especially in the way he managed to incorporate Bolan's War Against the Mafia and an above-average pairing with his brother in a fast-paced tale with a ring of truth and a real sense of relevance. Worth tracking down.

Hard to imagine a more timely book, but by the same token there's a sense of oversimplification in terms of plotting and characterization that makes things ring a little less than true. Still, all in all, a decent effort by the author. I especially liked seeing Able Team in the forefront of things.

How rare to find an Executioner novel without somebody holding a gun on the cover. Even rarer is to find the cover art actually relates to an actual scene from the book! The hand-to-hand battle between Bolan and Rudi was well-handled, as was the pacing. The psycho-twins was an interesting concept in terms of a villain. Overall a great apparent first effort in the series by the author. Wonder what became of him?

Pendleton in pretty good form here. I liked the way you rarely left Bolan's side, unlike many current entries in the series, when there are always these boring filler chapters overly describing villains and having them give away what they're going to do in the next chapter. In this one, Pendleton keeps cutting to the chase, making you want to hang on for the ride. Would have rated it higher but there was some clunky dialogue and it was just too cornball coming across an Italian-American named Chianti. I take it there's another novel where he has Bolan go up against a black villain named Chitlins, right?

A lotta been-there-done-that in terms of storyline, but the author tweaked the story with some good action scenes and interesting interplay between the Stony Man forces. The book would have been better if it had been shorter, i.e. had less padding.

Good cross-cutting in terms of storytelling here and I especially liked the way the Hollywood types at the film festival were shown as being tiresome and self-absorbed instead of cool. Ali-Jahn was a well-crafted villain, too. Great climax and lots of good dialogue.