Tim Phillips (MafiaWarsAreBest)

Bolan is blitzing in Chi-Town and finds himself up against a female Mafia boss who sells children into sexual slavery. The book's structure is fairly traditional. Bolan pops up in Chicago and starts punching the local Mafia and things start to shake loose. I thought the opening hit sequence was very Pendletonesque. Very nicely done in tone and description. The following car chase, however, was unrealistic because Bolan can't catch up with a Lincoln limousine in a Corvette of all things. Mack should have sucked the doors of that limo at will... The sequence with the two guards on the boat who talk about thinking that Mack - in role-camouflage as a technical diagnostician - could in fact have been the much feared Mack Bolan...was a nice touch. They weren't Mensa candidates, but it was nice to see Mack's opposition show some brains. The character of Denise Parelli - the actual power behind the Capo throne of her son - was a worthy villain. It probably fit the standards of the day, but having Lana Garner pull the MAC-10 from Mack and shot Parelli (so Mack wasn't executing a woman) felt like a cheat. Mack doesn't war on women and children...but Denise Parelli had earned having a marksman medal left on her lifeless corpse. In truth, I think the weakest part of the book is those last couple of chapters. Amidst factual mistakes (18 wheelers use diesel engines...not gasoline) and yet another sequence of the Chicago cops trying to capture Bolan (this time...surprise, surprise...successfully so there can be a dramatic scene between Bolan and the possibly dirty copy Detective Lester Griff) we get Lana Garner joining into the climatic firefight...until she acts "like a chick" and rushes blindly to look after the kids (Ripley and Jonsey the cat at the end of Alien felt less stupid). It basically got a little too pulpy for my preferences. Mack's armament is basic in this story. The Beretta 93-R, Big Thunder and a MAC-10 with a suppressor. Still...not a bad book. I think I'd probably reread this one at some point.

An interesting book in that the villains are nominally rabid environmentalists. That concept wasn't carried too far, however. Able Team spends most of their time blasting Russian agents while Phoenix is dueling your typical 3rd world Latin America private army types. The enviroterrorist plot seems almost to have been a waste of an original idea. Rather than building to some major terrorist attack to "save the environment", there is yet another 3rd world nutcase with nuclear ICBMS as the climax. Phoenix Force gets captured (again) and escapes (again). What Carl doesn't tear up with an automatic 12-gauge gets trashed by his mouth....is it just me or does he seem to be deliberately being bone-headed in this book just to give Hal something to do to clean up the messes he is making? I had some trouble with the whole Zone of Dispute concept where no one in Central America is claiming the area. I find that hard to suspend disbelief over. It might be disputed...but someone would claim it....indeed what is the Dispute if no one wants it??? I have an issue with the extended ending where Phoenix is racing around trying to locate the dead-man triggers to the ICBMs that are about to be launched. You are risking an explosion, but you can stop a missile by raking it with automatic rifle fire. An ICBM is not armor-plated. You could damage the motors or the guidance package and it might fly...but not far. Although some of the other reviews talk about how action packed this book is, I found a lot of it rather clinical reading for the most part. Here is an example drawn from deep in the book "Blancanales pumped away with his CAR-15. Guards fell one after the next. Lyons stayed clear of Blanacanale's field of fire, supplementing the withering 5.56mm hail with bullets of his own. Finally, they had cleared the field of opposition once again and Butler's armed guards were lying on the carpeted floor." A lot of the book is like this. There is action...but it is so....vague???....that I don't find it very satisfying. It is like reading the description of a gunfight in a screenplay...you know it should be exciting once you see it...but it doesn't "feel" like much on the page. I liked the last chunk of the book where Congressman Cross gets what is coming to him. The political twisting and turnings revealed at that point where interesting....as was the fact that Cross was allowed to drift away into political obscurity. I also felt that the book was more balanced with regards to what characters you saw. Sometimes, the field commanders of Able and Phoenix seem to be the only focus of the writer with the rest of the "cast" as movable parts of the scenery. Here...it seems that everyone does get a chance to do more than just pull triggers to support their "honored leader". Not a bad book...but drifting more toward the pulpier side that I know I personally don't care as much for. I suspect I will never reread it.

This book was forgettable. A bad sign for a men's action book is when it takes you 3-4 weeks to read it because you just don't care what happens next. I suspect some of my indifference is that the plot is "Bolan goes undercover to find the bad guys". I admit to not generally liking these plots. This book, however, really seemed to be struggling with keeping something interesting going. Teenager hitman, Russian superspies, illicit drug to create raving superhuman killers out of kids and Mack as an instructor in a private military academy for at-risk students. Just add a partridge-in-a-pear tree and you've got 'em all....and still I couldn't get enough interest to pick this book up each time I put it down. Mack was using the Beretta/AutoMag combo pretty much the entire book. In closing, I can't believe I would ever try to reread this book.

I found this book disappointing. I actually had trouble finishing it. Unusually for me with a Mike Newton Bolan, I was bored and just wanted the book to be over. Although this lists as a SuperBolan, it really is more in the tradition of The StonyMan Doctrine as the entire roster of characters is present tackling a really big threat (the first moves of a coup within the US military). This book is a bridge that brings the character of Mack Bolan back into the good graces of the US President. At the end, he is still "the outsider", but has offered to handle sensitive missions for the US government on a "case-by-case" basis with an explicit offer of government sanction (including a pardon for his illegal activities if he wishes it). The sequence of Mack's return to Stony Man farm was interesting to see. This book introduces the character of Barbara Price, who is such a replacement of April Rose that she slids into Mack's bed the first night he's at the Farm...an occurrence I didn't not find credible for the characters and the situation. There are a number of factual mistakes that irritated me. Carl Lyons is described as a Vietnam veteran. Some of the more recent BolanVerse writers seem to have this opinion. I'm not sure that Pendleton ever explictly said Carl was not...but if you read The Death Squad - which introduces Carl - it is pretty clear that he never had military service. He makes a statement that describes the Death Squad members as "they became men in a different sort of world - entirely different". The context of the statement makes it pretty clear that Carl is differentiating himself from these men...that they have combat service in Vietnam which changed them to be unlike himself and the law-enforcement officers he makes this statement too. Unusual for a Mike Newton novel in my reading, he got confused about firearms. He describes a G-11 as firing at 2000rpm, so fast a 3 round burst is discharged before the gun can recoil. The customized weapons that Able Team is carrying have been "detuned" to fire at only 600RPM. This is clearly a derivative of the Pendleton lore that the MAC-10 Bolan frequently liked to carry was detuned from 1200RPM to more like 700RPM to make it more controllable. The screw up is that a G-11 actually does fire at 600RPM normally when it full automatic mode. The 3-round burst mode is discharged at 2000RPM, which does result in the no-felt recoil state described by Newton....but that effect would disappear if the Able Team guns were detuned to 600RPM in a 3 round burst. There also was a major glitch in that Rafael's weaponry in the big shoot-out at the end suddenly is what Gary Manning is armed with. I suspect it is somewhat due to the characters being almost interchangeable in that scene...even Newton forgot who was whom. To the long-time Newton reader, it feels like "old home week" as Gary/Rafael is armed with a MM-1 40mm rotary grenade launcher, which - despite careful description of the exact sequence of 40mm grenades loaded in the drum - is always prepared to discharge exactly the next type of 40mm grenade that the story-line calls for (which does not matched the predescribed loadout). I suppose that in real life you could tag the back of the cylinders of a MM-1 with something like nailpolish for the various grenades you've got loaded and then manually rotate the cylinder to bring the correct round up under the hammer (I've read about people doing things like that with revolvers with mixed loads like Glaser Safety slugs and FMJ in the cylinder for different purposes), but it would be nice to see that described literally if that is in fact what is being done...with time allowed for the couple of seconds it would cost you to do this between rounds. The book has a bunch of nice small references back to Mack's life so far. The Colorado Killzone and the events of Wednesday's Wraith are spoken of as examples where Mack has already encountered rogue military units. #39 The New War is mentioned as a instance where Bolan undertook a "retrieve or terminate" mission of his own similar to what Able is attempting at the beginning of the book. A rogues gallery of "looney-tune messiahs" that Bolan has encountered during the New War is also listed out. I liked that Newton was actually able to acknowledge Mack's age at this point. Mack himself tells Barbara that "I'm old enough to be your father", a statement you wouldn't see the character making in "the modern era". Newton actually makes better usage of the entire roster of characters than some manage. His biggest focus after Mack himself is Able Team. Blancanales probably gets more "screen time" than either of his partners and Gadgets is actually the character that puts away the main villian in the end - rather than Mack. Phoenix Force is less well represented...but is still present in critical scenes. I found the idea that Mack had frequented houses of prostitution during his service in Vietnam a little "jarring". Definitely my own personal tastes, but I always saw Mack as a "white knight" and those two images are hard to make line up. I also found the end with Mack and Barbara buzzing away in her car as she "takes the warrior home", just too darn cute to really tolerate easily. For me, the book really seemed too blasted long. Newton took a plot that might have worked in a shorter book and stretched it by a lot of exposition and non-interesting character moments. Newton has written some good stuff with minimal combat and a lot of character moments...this is not one of them. Having the Stony Man operators play "let's infiltrate the enemy and figure out in 2 days or less what the plan they've been developing for the last three years is" reflects a plot-device I always have found hard to stomach. Newton's delivery of it here doesn't really change my opinion that this is not the correct way to use these characters. if I re-read this book, it would probably just be the sequence where Mack arrives back at Stony Man Farm.

Mack turns his gang-busting techniques against two rival gangs in the city of San Francisco. I thought Mike Newton did a pretty nice job of adhering to the classical Bolan formula while keeping the plot fairly fresh. Using street-gangs as the villans was nice. Having them wary enough to suspect that Bolan was trying to set them against each other was a smart choice. My only real complaint is with the character of Corey Souder. The story really didn't need yet another "innocent hostage held until Bolan shakes them free" sequence. I was really struck in this book of how Newton utilized the classic Pendleton technique of describing gun battles and conflicts in broad, narrative terms. Many of the New War books read like the novelization of a 1st person shooter. They are just long sequences of Bolan running, diving, triggering while the author searches for yet another adjective for a 9mm or .44 Magnum round. If you read the original Pendletons, the gun battles often covered 5-10 pages for an entire novel. Newton made use of this concept in this book. You follow Bolan as he builds toward a gun battle...but for several of them, it was more interesting to follow other characters moving towards the conflict Bolan was starting...so Newton went with them and let the gun battle take place off screen...picking up Mack later with a basic statement of how the fight was going. As is common with the Newton books, he acknowledges Mack's history and Bolan runs across characters he'd meet in previous adventures in San Francisco. Cleverly, Newton solves the most difficult question that a writer faces with the Bolan novels (how does Mack find the villans he's hunting in the 17 minutes he is in any given city as he saves the day), by having Mack pickup intell from the local police, who think they are giving it to a federal agent. Mack uses the pretty standard Newton armament package in this one. The 93R/Big Thunder, a silenced Uzi, a Marlin .444 for a sniper scene and the M-16/203 for the big finish. A nice touchback to the Pendleton days is Mack using what is clearly the M-79 40MM grenade launcher at one point. Definitely a book to pull out and reread on a warm lazy day.

I wanted this book to be better than it was. The build-up and basic plot line had a lot of promise that I didn't think was ultimately delivered. Bolan moves through the heart of Moscow and walks in and out of the most feared prisons of the KGB with unrealistic ease. The author keeps referring to the 7.62MM light machine guns mounted on armored cars as submachine guns. Cars explode like they were in a John Woo movie. The militia police are all clearly holders of Advanced Storm-Trooper Marksmen degrees as they keep shooting each other up. It is a small point but the author forgot that Mack has used blacksuits with a reverse-side that is pure white for winter fighting (definitely with the time and government involvement Mack has...he would get a winter-colored suit as he is headed into a Moscow with snow on the ground). The sequence where Mack sneaks into a prison by hanging on the frame of a truck jarred because after pages of describing Mack's bare hands freezing as he holds onto the truck...he suddenly has gloves as he is climbing a wall. I found the whole sequence where Mack suddenly has a KGB ID that lets him act like a Black Ace against the Mafia...within the very headquarters of the KGB itself extremely jarring. The people he does this to are described as the top leaders in the KGB. The author doesn't do anything to lay the groundwork for these men to suddenly be bowing down to Mack just because he has some ubertop ID. How these men would not know the identity of a superagent working at a level where they had to immediately obey him is just too odd to accept. The sequence where Strakhov has to get to the roof to fire a flare to signal his troopers to attack the dissidents doesn't make any sense. Why wouldn't Strakhov just use a radio or a phone call? It basically only seems to be there so Strakhov can shoot himself with his own flaregun and thus die some "symbolic" death. For those keeping track, this book establishes that Bolan can pilot a chopper. He steals a Hind and uses it to basically level the compound at the end....although even that is weirdly written as the author sets up that Bolan has to escape NOW before he is overwelmed...then has Bolan spend quite a chunk of time in burning the complex down with the Hind before actually leaving. So in a lot of places, the book is not self-consistent. This happens enough to be really noticeable and disturb the flow of the story. This is not a bad book. I might read it again...but there are better books in the Bolan adventures.

Wow. This book is definitely a must-read for anyone who followed the original Mafia War. Never before has a Bolan novel had so few action sequences and so much revealing character development and dialogue. I must admit that at the end, I found it a little stretched how easily the Bolan brothers walk away once they are out of the Court. Honestly, if Bolan was in jail somewhere, I'd figure there would be a small armed camp posted outside with all the law agencies wanting a piece. Admittedly, the author spun a nice cloud over how Bolan's arrest was being handled as a local issue and Mack's insistence upon immediately moving to trial keeps the story taking place over only a couple of days...so you grant the author the small indulgence because the story is just soo good. A definite will read again.

This book was a big disappointment. I am a fan of the zombie genre and the idea of Bolan vs zombies was one I liked - even if they were the modern "fast" zombies from 28 Days Later and other works and not the classical Romero zombies. After reading the book, I think I've found the 1st Bolan novel that will be done as a movie. Unfortunately, the movie will be done by The Asylum and will broadcast as a SyFy Sinema Event some Saturday night with a cast comprised of ex-StarGate actors. It was that bad. The character of Luther Harkin was one of the most illogical, over-the-top b-movie villains I've ever had the displeasure of reading. Dennis Hopper on PCP for three weeks could only begin to approach the level of scene-chewing this character indulges in. The plot is so blasted weak that the writer felt compelled to add a mercenary "executive protection team" - one of whom is named Romero - who manage to muscle their way into a top-secret lab locked down by multiple government agencies to "rescue" Harkin. Individual scenes are very poorly written. An action sequence is lengthily described by one character...then the author seemed to realize that the door is open and zombies are flooding into the room and there are other people present...so something has to be done about that. I've seen multiple viewpoints of a situation done in other books and done well. This was not another example of that style of writing. Much of the book reads as if the author didn't have an actual "mental picture" of what is going in the story...he was simply patching together paragraphs and sentences until he had enough to declare a chapter done. The meeting sequences at Stony Man Farm were painful to read. Barbara Price has to be the single worst meeting organizer ever in terms of actually having a reason to assemble a group of people. The meetings simply exist for the author to spill some narrative and soak up a few pages towards filling the book. As the end of the first meeting dragged along, I could almost see the author checking off the characters in the room one by one as they departed so he could get down to just Bolan and Price for their "dramatic conversation". The zombie sequences are not even particularly well done to me. The zombies alternate between uberdestructive and being stopped by a flimsy door when the needs of the story dictate. I didn't mind that they are fast zombies...that is a style choice...what I did mind is that they are not particular threatening even though they are so fast. Most damning, the entire point of a zombie story is what is happening with the people who are trapped by the zombies. Zombies exist as a hurricane or earthquake or a martian invasion. They are a force that is applied to a group of characters to put them under pressure and make them react. I had little interest in these characters and what happened to them. They are so broadly and poorly depicted I just didn't care about them. If you want to see a good zombie story, pick up Day Of The Dead sometimes. People yell and scream and shoot each other; there is a lot of action. But the plotting is such that it is more believable. Crazed as he is; Rhodes is a lot more realistic as a villain that Harkin ever could dream of being. Since I simply can't resist beating this thing just one last time to make sure it is in fact going to stay down and not lurch up like the gut-shot undead, I will state that this is not a book I am going to reread. Ever.

Shot twice in the shoulder (for yucks, feel your own shoulder....where the heck would you get hit by a 9mm and not break some bones???) Mack is laid up in a porn actor flophouse while role-camouflaged as a HeadShed problem-solver in the middle of a kiddie-porn Mafia empire. With Mack incapacitated for most of the book, the writer has to rely upon Johnny Bolan to provide much of the action. Johnny is better written in places in this book....other places - like when he cons his way into the Don's house to steal guns because Mack and he don't have any - were better left in an old Dukes Of Hazard episode (especially when he repeatedly states he will have to go back to steal more guns because the guns he got were stolen from him). The Melody Megrims character was better written then many of the secondary female characters in Bolan novels...but she was more than balanced by the embarrassment that is Edger Twichen. The stolen armament of the Bolan brothers is a weird combination. WWII-era MP-44 SMGs and a Japanese handgun are the "head" weapons. Mack lifts an Automag from a dead Mafia gunner, relishes having one in his hand again...but then the weapon disappears from the rest of the book. The writer made some technical mistakes...the 32-round clip of a MP-44 is not going to fit in a sports jacket's pocket...and 9MM is definitely not described as a "tumbler" in general. The writing was uneven. A chapter of detailed explanation following a character's every move doing fairly boring stuff is wrapped up in the end by a few sentences that contain the only drama and character moments that the whole sequence really had to offer. The storyline was somewhat interesting as an extension of 077 Hollywood Hell...but the anger that Bolan had in that book is not really present in this one....despite the victims being kids and right there next to Bolan all the time. I'm not sure I would be bothered to reread this one.

The Mike-Newton-Mafia-War-Revisited Tour continues in St. Louie. Like the previous Mike Newton books of this vintage, this edition is centered around Mack revisiting the location of a Mafia War's vintage "shake down". Old friends and old enemies are about. Bolan is blitzing in classical Pendleton style. There is an intriguing little day dream by a Mafia Don of his life with Bolan inducted as a member of his Family. How he would be safe as no one would dare to risk the wrath of the "Bolan Demon" that he has on a leash. Newton amusingly lampshades his constant plot-device of having Bolan steal a car during a soft penetration gone hard and shoot his way out of the enemy's estate...while being pursued by at least two enemy limousine crew-wagons. It is nice to see the Black Ace ploy finally really fail in a major way. Pendleton always pointed out the danger Mack was running by doing this...but I think the only other time Mack couldn't pull this off is when he came up against Barney Matilda - the creator of the Aces. The whole struggle with the Aces in this book is nicely done. How Mack sees a resurgent Ace corp as a major reversal of his war against the Mafia and how the Aces are maneuvering in an effort to secure a place for themselves in the breathing space that Mack's relentless assaults have opened up in the wider world of the Mob. I really liked the scene where Mack walks into a Mafia bank and cleans the place out without firing a single shot. Anybody can spray lead all over the place...it takes real talent (in both the fictional character and in the writer to pull it off) to write a scene like this that is tense and fun without resorting to a bloody shootout at the end. Mack's armament is the traditional 93R/Big Thunder, M16/203 and a MAC-10 modified down to 750rpm.

Another Mike Newton book that touches back to a previous Bolan adventure. Here, the setting is Vegas. The enemies are a mix of Yakuza, the ruling Mafia structure and the preceding organized crime members, looking to repay a 30 old debt by kicking the current ruling Mafia house down. The grandaughter of the leader of the Old Mafia Guard is in the mix (unusually for a Newton book of this era, she isn't dead by the end) as Mack is throwing lead in all three directions trying to orchestrate an implosion to clean up Sin City just a little. There is no nuclear weapon, biological terrorism or other "the world will end unless you save it Mr. Bond" moments...but Newton makes a good old-fashioned mob-war worth reading. Mack and Hal are smoking again (or still...depends upon your perspective). Tommy Anders is briefly about. Mack compliments his "Newton Standard Armament" of the 93R/Big Thunder and the amazing "always has the type of 40mm grenade you need at that moment in the chamber" XM-18 with a Mini-Uzi and a .444 Marlin. The heavy rifle was a nice addition. Bolan's skill with a sniper rifle sometimes doesn't get recognized by authors. There is a very nice scene where the fear and destruction that can be inflicted by a sniper is depicted from the part of the Mafia goons under fire. Another fun, fast read that will be reread at some point

Another excellent book as Mike Newton channels Don Pendleton's spirit to create a worthy Bolan adventure in the New War. Mack is back in Miami, discovering old friends and enemies while battling new enemies with new friends. Big Thunder and the 93R get most of the workout, with some assistance from an Uzi and a suppressed MAC-10. The "head weapon" though has to be the XM-18 rotary grenade launcher (which Newton has used several times before). As in previous books, Mack has simply uncanny ability to predict which type of 40MM round he will need when, stocking the 12 rounds in the XM-18 to precisely match the circumstances he will encounter in his raid. The quibble is minor, however, as Newton delivers a fun book with Mack playing the role of a secretive Justice Department agent to "scam" the police while dragging out Omega the Black Ace to scam the Mafia hoods. By the end, Mack is using the Mafia to destroy a terrorist raid on Key Biscayne. Another fast, easy-to-read book that follows some of the normal Bolan formula without feeling "retreaded". A book I will reread.

This is simply an excellent read for folks who are fans of Mack Bolan as opposed to fans of The Executioner. A lot of meaty character moments that lead up to a burst of action in about the last third of the book that is well-constructed and feels very believe-able. Mack's weapons are what he can find (a .22 pump-action rifle with 11 rounds is his head weapon for much of the story) or make (Cowboy's men really pay a price for Mack discovering their little C4 car-bomb and defusing it to build his roofing-nails/tin can grenades). The ending of the book with Cowboy's men besieging the house with silenced automatic weapons has enough broad similarities to the original Assault On Precinct 13 to make me wonder if the movie wasn't an inspiration to Mike Newton. I agree that the sex scene with Toni feels completely out of place, but it also is a convention of the pulps that the hero gets the girl....and there are similarities here back to #17 Jersey Guns with the widow of a soldier being attracted to Mack. This book is a very quick read. I literally read it in about two hours one day while commuting to work. Newton's writing flows easily and his style has enough of the "voice of Pendleton" to satisfy if you enjoyed Don's writing style during the Mafia War. This definitely is a book to reread.

Code of Dishonor is I believe the 2nd Bolan novel that the late Mike McQuay wrote. I think the book shows a better grasp of the character and raised a very interesting vision of Mack retiring. Like Death Has a Name, this book has a real feeling that McQuay either traveled in Japan or did some decent research on Tokyo and its suburbs. The plot is needlessly "heightened" in my opinion by adding a surprise nuclear threat that Mack must address, but the story line is not bad. An aspect I found particularly interesting was the offer that Hashimoto made to Mack about a permanent safe home in Japan. This book is from the era when the adventures of Bolan were still happening in more-or-less real time. It is about twenty years since Mack started his private war against the Mafia...so Bolan is nearly fifty years old. He does give some serious thought to accepting Hashimoto's offer. There is definitely a temptation there (beyond the attraction to and of Hoshimoto's daughter), that feels right for someone who has been warring as long as Mack has. This book is less pulpy than McQuay's previous effort...but Mack is forced to surrender 2 or 3 times as the plot demands (why are the bad guys early in Bolan books so good at eluding the police and Bolan such an frakking amateur?) and the whole end sequence in the subterranean complex is a little too much like the end of a Roger Moore Bond movie for my tastes. Bolan uses his standard-to-this-era armament (Big Thunder/93-R) and adds in the Weatherby V in .460Mag with a sniper sequence that is somewhat marred by McQuay thinking the Weatherby V is a single-shot weapon (it has a 2 round magazine) and putting Bolan in a position where the starting plan is he will handle seven sentries single-handed so the ground forces running forward are not fired upon (apparently no one in the Japanese force can handle a long-range shot). I like the idea of the subterranean complex left over from WWII that Hoshimoto is using as his base, but finding it filled with Zero fighters and stockpiled fuel and munitions seemed a bit much, especially in the scale that is depicted. The complex is written as if it stretches for mile upon mile with all of it ventilated and lighted yet populated with very scant number of people given its huge size. I did enjoy this book and will probably re-read it at some point.

When I learned that the late Mike McQuay had written a few Bolan novels, I was excited to find them. McQuay had first come to my attention as the author of the novelization of Escape From New York (one of the best movie adaptions I've ever read). He also wrote the excellent hard-boiled PI/SciFi series Matthew Swain. Given these successes, I really wanted to read his interpretation of Bolan. I must say that I have been disappointed. McQuay did spend time and energy in researching the primary setting of Israel. More than a lot of the Bolan novels, you do get a sense of "being there". His writing style is also easy to read. However, I am not really sure he grasped how to write the character of Bolan. The book opens with Bolan about to pull a hit on a mob capo at the man's daughter's wedding. I mean literally in the church during the ceremony. Mack is doing this because it is the only time he can reach the capo. In the end, Mack decides against the hit (which doesn't matter as another character opens fire and starts the story off), but the mere fact that McQuay thinks Mack would consider pulling a hit in such circumstances speaks of a failure to understand the character's legacy. There are these constant "off-the-mark" moments as I was reading the book. Overwrought statements of morality followed by casual destruction and actions taken for no other reason than that the plot of the book demanded it. A constant reference to Bolan deliberately gut-shooting people rather than going for the head or chest. A few chapters that end with "tough" swears that sound more like Bolan is out of control and not the nuanced fighter of the Pendleton era. This book is in the pulpier wing of the Bolan saga. A lengthy car-chase with Bolan, the mob and cops involved and Bolan and the mob getting way. Bolan getting jumped repeatedly by groups of enemies and fighting them hand-to-hand. Bolan and a group of vigilante Israelis being the only group available to oppose a large organized terrorist wave within Israel itself (I mean, come on! Israel is more heavily-armed than Texas. A major terrorist strike would bring out everything but the kitchen sink). The primary non-mob villian - Abba - is literally a giggling psychopath who is introduced to us in a scene where he shoots a cat to show us how evil he is. I didn't like the way Bolan's character was written toward his brother Johnny. Bolan was too ignorantly hard on his brother at times...at others seemed too inclined to accept the danger Johnny posed due to his relative inexperience. It really grates on my sensibilities as Mack was so damn adamant about Johnny not being near him during the Mafia wars (I know, I know...times change...but for crikes-sake...at least honor the characters by remembering Mack's love for his brother and the seriousness of what they are doing. Mack would not permit Johnny to be with him if he didn't really think Johnny could handle the situations they are going into). On other issues, McQuay makes a common "rookie" mistake by putting a noise suppressor on a revolver...and suppressing a .357 mag to boot. Suppressors only work on automatics (OK, OK, there is an old Russian revolver...but that is the exception) and an effective suppressor for a .357mag would be the length and width of my fore-arm. After the beginning of the book, Mack appears to lose his 93-R and Big Thunder and is using a suppressed MAC-10, a Linda carbine and a .38 revolver while in Israel. Given that location, using Uzis would have made more sense....but that is me. The .38 makes the least sense, but I don't think Mack ever fires the thing. I did like some of the ideas that McQuay brings up in the book. There are some interesting passages where Johnny is worried about how the Endless War is affecting his brother's mind. That Mack is losing touch with reality and becoming psychotic with the violence. Mack beginning to suffer from the pressure of constant combat operations is a realistic touch in a fairly pulpy book. I think this book was worth reading once...but I am not sure I would read it ever again. Tim Phillips