This book is 25 books later into the series than Double Crossfire, and they really must have been churning them out by this time. Much has happened in the Executioner’s world. He’s no longer doing terrorists in Turkey, now he’s freelancing or something and he’s in Southeast Asia, rescuing POWs. It was what all the pulp guys were doing in that era.
Sadly, the quality has declined greatly, and the character has changed. Now, instead of just killing bad guys, he’s also beating a Russian KGB official’s wife together with a chair leg as part of a trap. Not because she was going to squeal, but because she had to die. So it’s lost some of the essence of the character. The plot is movieish and a quick bunch of set pieces.
You want to know what caliber of book this is? At the end, Mack Bolan saves the POWs, who are repatriated through a bureaucratic process. Bolan goes to meet his Khmer guide, Eng, an attractive woman who leads a band of resistance fighters.
She looked up into his eyes. “Will you return to Bangkok with me?” she asked.
Then Bolan read the look. It was longing, plain and simple. He realized now that she liked him more than just a friend.
Oh, have mercy.
I got another later in the Executioner line here to read. I’ll probably hit it sometime next year. And, sadly, I’ll probably pick up more. On the one hand, with a series like this written by the shop writers, the quality is bound to be uneven to say the least. On the plus side, they can’t all be as bad as this, can they?
Stay tuned in 2011 for answers.
