{"id":19815,"date":"2018-05-08T11:38:56","date_gmt":"2018-05-08T16:38:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/?p=19815"},"modified":"2018-05-08T11:38:56","modified_gmt":"2018-05-08T16:38:56","slug":"book-report-vendetta-in-venice-mack-bolan-the-executioner-117-1988","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/2018\/05\/08\/book-report-vendetta-in-venice-mack-bolan-the-executioner-117-1988\/","title":{"rendered":"Book Report: <i>Vendetta in Venice<\/i> Mack Bolan\/The Executioner #117 (1988)"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/bsgfx\/vendettainvenice.jpg\" width=\"200\" alt=\"Book cover\" align=\"right\" hspace=\"4\">I decided to break up the serious reading with my first Mack Bolan book of the year.  It&#8217;s been almost six months since <a href=\"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/2017\/12\/09\/book-report-vietnam-fallout-the-executioner-113-1988\/\" target=\"_new\"><em>Vietnam Fallout<\/em><\/a>.  This book, the 117th in the series, is only four later, but their increased girth means they&#8217;re no longer quick reads to pick up when I&#8217;m in between other lengthier works.  They are the lengthier works.<\/p>\n<p>In this book, Hal Brognola is in Amsterdam for a conference when he goes on a bit of a walkabout and ends up getting mistaken for a customer in a person smuggling ring.  He taps Mack Bolan to investigate it.  Bolan does and discovers it&#8217;s really one guy, mostly, and some time later he breaks it up and gets the girl.<\/p>\n<p>The book differs from other characterizations of Bolan&#8211;instead of a hypercompetent wish fulfillment protagonist, Bolan here comes off as bit less competent and not necessarily even the driver of the action.  He&#8217;s more passive, and there&#8217;s 250 pages of stuff happening to Bolan.  The book only finishes up in Venice, so the title is a bit odd (but is alliterative).<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;d like to think I&#8217;m going to read more than two Bolan books this year&#8211;I have 72 in the Executioner and related titles to read&#8211;but unless they start getting better in the average, I might not.  Especially at my galacial pace this year.<\/p>\n<p><iframe style=\"width:120px;height:240px;\" marginwidth=\"0\" marginheight=\"0\" scrolling=\"no\" frameborder=\"0\" src=\"\/\/ws-na.amazon-adsystem.com\/widgets\/q?ServiceVersion=20070822&#038;OneJS=1&#038;Operation=GetAdHtml&#038;MarketPlace=US&#038;source=ac&#038;ref=qf_sp_asin_til&#038;ad_type=product_link&#038;tracking_id=stlbrianj-20&#038;marketplace=amazon&#038;region=US&#038;placement=B002J33Z58&#038;asins=B002J33Z58&#038;linkId=6799696ba9bfefd9032dbb80e25b90ab&#038;show_border=false&#038;link_opens_in_new_window=false&#038;price_color=333333&#038;title_color=0066c0&#038;bg_color=ffffff\"><br \/>\n    <\/iframe><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I decided to break up the serious reading with my first Mack Bolan book of the year. It&#8217;s been almost six months since Vietnam Fallout. This book, the 117th in the series, is only four later, but their increased girth means they&#8217;re no longer quick reads to pick up when I&#8217;m in between other lengthier [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3334,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20,11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-19815","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-book-report","category-books"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19815","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3334"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19815"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19815\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":19816,"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19815\/revisions\/19816"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19815"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19815"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19815"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}