Lobotomy Boy

I'm almost finished with "Lethal Tribute," and I can't put the damned thing down. It's superb. The character development is some of the best I've seen in any Bolanverse book, and the action is both fresh and gripping. The plot, while being a bit fantastical, is tight and holds together well. This book ranks as one of my favorite Superbolan titles. I'm going to give it a solid ten stars.

I enjoyed this book very much. The author did a great job developing interesting and believable characters and pacing the action. His villains were multi-dimensional and intriguing and even more important, consistant. When Bolan begins playing them against one another, the author has established the bad guys' characters well enough that their reactions seem plausible. And as always with this author, the text is extremely well-written.

I'm a fan of anything written about snipers and this is the best action adventure novel I've ever read about the subject. Oneof my favorite books is "Marine Sniper," which is about Marine Sgt. Carlos Hathcock. The fact that the author referenced this terrific book made me appreciate "Slaughter Squad" even more. This is one of the very best Bolan books yet, ranking up there with those penned by Don Pendleton himself.

This is my very favorite Executioner novel yet, bar none. I've read maybe 50 books in the series, and I thought this one was the best combination of action, tight plot line, and character development. Too often when a writer tries to inject humor into the Bolan character, it comes across as forced and unnatural. Not so here--in this book Bolan comes across at his most likable and entertaining. All the characters are well developed, including the villians, and the book featured a nice mix of Stony Man characters, not enough to hijack the plot from Bolan, but enough to keep the action going non-stop. Great work, Mr. W.

I really don't think you can have TOO much action in a Stony Man novel. I very much enjoyed the pacing of this book, and I think DPW does a great job of weaving the past storylines into the text. As someone who is fairly new to the Don Pendleton universe, I like these glimpses into the past and I don't find them at all confusing. I think Mr. W. does a superb job of integrating history into all his books. Regarding the plot, yes, it was inventive, but I didn't find it too much of a stretch. Robotics are definitely the wave of the future in combat. I just finished co-authoring a book with an Iraq War veteran, an infantry soldier in a national guard unit stationed with the marines in Anbar Province. In addition to combat patrols, he learned to fly a spy drone and used it to capture some insurgents planting an IED. This stuff is happening in real combat and will play an increasingly important part in Bolan/Stony Man novels, too. I too enjoy the way Mr. W. draws the Stony Man characters, though one thing I've noticed in not just this, but all Stony Man novels is that sometimes the voices of the characters aren't distinct enough. Sometimes the characters all meld together a bit too much. This is probably realistic--people who work closely together tend to pick up each other's speach habits--but it is a bit confusing in a book. "Extreme Arsenal" was no worse than any other in this regard, but it is something all "Stony Man" authors might want to keep in mind.

This was a very good book, with typical VanCook-level writing, that is, very good writing. My only complaint involves the character of the young journalist. I found his dilemma regarding his love life tiresome and contrived, his reactions towards authority figures predictable to the point of cliché, and Bolan's interest in him as a human being forced and inauthentic. What this kid really needed was a good kick in the junk rather than the molly coddling he received from Bolan. Even so, this was still an enjoyable book and well worth reading.

Jerry VanCook's latest Executioner novel--"Hell Night"--is his best yet. The pacing is spot-on, the action varied and gripping, and the characters are interesting enough to hold my attention. I especially like the villians. Nothing is more fun than reading about Mack Bolan blowing the crap out of a bunch of neo-Nazis. The plot and action seem highly original.

This is a classic Executioner novel. It weaves past and present together in a way that uses Bolan's history to give the reader a fuller sense of his motivation. It also features an interesting cast of characters that are fully developed (or as fully developed as is possible with the constraints of the space available), something that has become sort of Doug's trademark. All-in-all, this is one of my all-time favorite Executioner novels.

This was an entertaining book with an interesting story. It didn't bother me that Bolan was a bit out of character, either. But I would have rated the book much higher if the writing had been better. The book starts with a passive sentence--Los Angeles wasn't Bolan's favorite town--and remained in the passive voice throughout the book. That's just plain sloppy writing.

This was probably my least favorite Executioner novel so far. Like Fear Rally, the writing really wasn't very good; in this case, neither was the action. In fact, it was downright slow in parts. I had the hardest time finishing this book of any Mack Bolan book yet.

When I read this book, I was surprised by the quality of the writing. It was the first Executioner novel I've read by Jerry VanCook, and it made me a fan. I hesitated to read this one because of the bike club content--I expected another uninformed, hokey treatment of the subject, but VanCook did a pretty good job of portraying the bikers as, if not real, at least not completely over-the-top and two-diminsional.

Another excellent Executioner novel from Jerry VanCook. I found this book entertaining from the first to last page, and never once got bored. I thought the character of the undercover cop was well-developed, and the protagonist believable. I do get a little tired of endings where Mack promises not to kill the bad guy and then someone else kills him, but that is an extremely minor complaint.

I enjoyed the action in this book, and the idea of using rocket-powered torpedoes was intriguing, but it wasn't as good as other books in the Stony Man series. I also found some of the inaccuracies distracting, like "thumbing the safeties" on Glocks. I own and carry multiple Glocks and the only control on any of them is the trigger.

This was the first Executioner novel I read and while I enjoyed the action, I wasn't impressed with the writing. It was good enough for me to read more Executioner novels, but I'm glad other examples feature more well-crafted prose. I also wish the author had done a bit more research into the Dakar Rally, which I have followed for nearly three decades. The action didn't ring true. Still, this book was good enough to motivate me to read more books in the series and make me a fan.

After having read a dozen or so Executioner novels, this was my first Stony Man novel and I thought it was highly entertaining. It was extremely well-written and I enjoyed the episodic nature of the Stony Man format. It made for a quick and enjoyable read. I agree the female spy's sexuality was handled a bit clumsily, but I don't read these novels for the romantic content; I read them for the action and this novel was pretty much non-stop action.

Like all the Jerry VanCook books I have read, Hostile Crossing is well-written and worth reading. But this was my least favorite of his Executioner novels, mostly because I found it too difficult to accept the protagonists as credible. Their hypocrisy was too obvious and it seemed unlikely that their plot would advance as far as it did. Still, it was entertaining.