Ultimack44

Well, I have to say, after all the majority of negative reviews on this title, I was not expecting much but was pleasantly surprised! The plot wasn't horrible, perhaps done before but overall it was made up for with the great writing and interesting action scenes. Not bullets flying on every page, but not pages and pages of boring dialogue either, a good balance. Some good descriptions of the Italian geography (wish I could find more Bolan books where he's in Italy). It was also nice to see Mack get a little lovin' from his female helper, nothing over the top that made it like reading a porno novel or anything but again, a nice little addition to the story (Our hero doesn't seem to get enough 'R&R', still holding a torch over April Rose I guess). My one major complaint was (my personal pet peeve) that the author makes the rather heinous technical error of referring to a guns' MAGAZINE as a 'clip', ya I know nothing unforgivable, but hey, I'm something of a gun nut, so I really appreciate when an author of a action series gets the nomenclature correct. To sum it up, I really did enjoy this one and will look for more from the same author.

Jerry Van Cook does it again! I've read so many in the Mack Bolan universe and JVC is by far my favorite author. He brings his knowledge of weaponry, tactics and a flair for entertaining writing and in Enemy Within he definitely hits the mark! The action scenes are really well done here and what really impressed me was the author not portraying all "survivalist" groups as racist nut jobs (unlike some other authors). It's refreshing to see Big Mack actually receiving some help from one. Mack, PF and AT all get equal page space which is nice too, so many Stony Man books don't even have Mack Bolan in the story! All in all this is by far one of my favorite Stony Man stories, do yourself a favor and read this one on a special occasion...It's worth it! (One disclaimer: you may not like the book if you're a big Clinton fan haha!)

This was my second Dan Schmidt Bolan adventure and have to say I'm not impressed. The stereotypical "white hate" theme is a little annoying and while the action scenes aren't too bad, Schmidt falls prey to my personal pet peeve, referring to a gun magazine as a "clip". Mike newton and Jerry van Cook are at the top of my list for using proper gun nomenclature (which makes sense for JVC as he was a former police officer and also a firearms enthusiast writing for a number of gun and knife publications). The villain was a bit cliche and a bit unbelievable, don't think someone that unstable would have made it as far as he did! The main thing I didn't care for was the rather needless firefight at the White house at the end. Seemed as though the author rushed to get it over with. From now on I'm going to stick with the authors I prefer.