{"id":29764,"date":"2022-04-19T13:14:17","date_gmt":"2022-04-19T18:14:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/?p=29764"},"modified":"2022-04-18T12:16:04","modified_gmt":"2022-04-18T17:16:04","slug":"book-report-tiger-stalk-the-executioner-220-1997","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/2022\/04\/19\/book-report-tiger-stalk-the-executioner-220-1997\/","title":{"rendered":"Book Report: <i>Tiger Stalk<\/i> The Executioner #220 (1997)"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/bsgfx\/tigerstalk.jpg\" width=\"200\" alt=\"Book cover\" align=\"right\" hspace=\"4\">I thought this might be the first of the Executioner novels I&#8217;ve read this year, but apparently I read <em><a href=\"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/2022\/01\/09\/book-report-terror-intent-the-executioner-219-1997\/\" target=\"_new\" rel=\"noopener\">Terror Intent<\/a><\/em> to start the year.  Which proves, I suppose, either how forgettable the later Executioner novels are or perhaps how long ago January was from now in my mind.<\/p>\n<p>At any rate, this book is a rare artifact in the Executioner series in that the title kinda refers to the plot:  Mack Bolan goes to Sri Lanka to find an American diplomat held by the Tamil Tigers.  C&#8217;mon, man, if you&#8217;re of colonoscopy age like me, you cannot read <em>Sri Lanka<\/em> without a muddy British accent and pronouncing it <em>Sri Lanka, formerly Ceylon<\/em>, can you?<\/p>\n<p align=\"center\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/7h5WExLGKUA\" title=\"YouTube video player\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>Spoiler alert: Mack Bolan does not beat any shopkeepers to death with their own shoes, although this book was written long enough after the film came out that the author <em>could<\/em> have inserted such a scene.  Or perhaps dropped in a <em>Sri Lanka, formerly Ceylon<\/em> for us.  But no.<\/p>\n<p>So Mack Bolan meets up with an intelligence counterpart who is playing all three ends against the middle: the government of Sri Lanka, the Tamil Tigers, and the Americans&#8211;I have not done the calculations to determine exactly what number of agent that makes her.  She&#8217;s ostensibly in the service of India&#8217;s Research and Analysis Wing (RAW), but she&#8217;s sleeping with the head of one of the factions of the Tigers.  So when I read Pergelator <a href=\"https:\/\/pergelator.blogspot.com\/2022\/04\/sacred-games.html\" target=\"_new\" rel=\"noopener\">yesterday<\/a>, and he mentions RAW in terms of a film he watched, I was all like <em>oh, of course I know what that is<\/em>.  So these books have some small educational value.<\/p>\n<p>Bolan, like my middle school (and high school) Dungeons and Dragons group, does not use the encumbrance rules.  Check this out:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>A large canvas carryall at his feet contained more gear, including extra clips for the Uzi, as well as for the Beretta and Desert Eagle.  Additionally, a 5.56mm M-16 A-2 assault rifle, fitted with an M-203 single-shot grenade launcher, lay beside a small radio transceiver to send messages to the fishing boat waiting in a port in India just across from Palk Strait.  An assortment of M-40 and 40mm fragmentation and incendiary grenades, C-4 plastic explosive, miniaturized detonators, trip triggers and timers, and three compact missile-launching LAW 80s completed the portable armory.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>He&#8217;s carries this bag various places, but it&#8217;s well over a hundred pounds of equipment easily, so he should not be carrying it with one hand.   I don&#8217;t know how big of a carryall that is, but that&#8217;s a lot of weight and cubic dimension for a single bag.  But I can&#8217;t talk.  It was not uncommon for my fighters to go into a dungeon with a 10&#8242; pole, 50&#8242; of rope, carrying a pole axe, two handed sword, long bow, and food and water for a week (plus whatever loot we found).<\/p>\n<p>A serviceable book in the series, torn from the headlines of 1997&#8211;and the civil war in Sri Lanka, which began in 1983, would last until 2009.<\/p>\n<p>So maybe one can learn things even from these men&#8217;s adventure paperbacks from time to time.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I thought this might be the first of the Executioner novels I&#8217;ve read this year, but apparently I read Terror Intent to start the year. Which proves, I suppose, either how forgettable the later Executioner novels are or perhaps how long ago January was from now in my mind. At any rate, this book is [&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-29764","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\/29764","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=29764"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29764\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":29767,"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29764\/revisions\/29767"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=29764"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=29764"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=29764"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}