QUICK SHOTS: The Executioner #68: Prairie Fire by Don (Mike Newton) Pendleton

It had been a while since I dug into a Mack Bolan, and I figured as the year closed (I read this last week) I might as well ring it out with something I'd been meaning to read for a while. Prairie Fire has a good reputation within the series. Plus, it takes place in my home state of Kansas so, I've always been hankering to check it out. But I don't buy Executioner books online. They are plentiful around my book-buying parts and are often under a dollar, so I scrounge around and eventually come up with the ones I want. 

So, I've had this one on my TBR pile for six months after paying a quarter for it at my local's clearance rack with a stack of other Mack's. I usually just go to the copyright page and check out who actually wrote them and go by that. Picking up mostly the ones by Mike Newton, Stephen Mertz, Chet Cunningham and the like. I knew this one was my next Mack Bolan, but it was just a matter of time. 

I've dug Mike Newton's work in the field for a while, in both fiction and his awesome non-fiction book, How to Write Action Adventure Novels. I got into his stuff from his early work Terror at Boulder Dam from Carousel Books. Newton's a very solid writer of men's adventure and westerns; his stuff is meat and potatoes. Delicious tales that go down easy with some substance to them. This was the first Bolan I've read from him, and it won't be my last. 

Prairie Fire picks up in medias res with Bolan escaping the clutches of this book's evildoers. I haven't read #67 so I don't really know if it's a continuation of that book, but you don't really need to know. Bolan explains that he's on the run again, from the mob, the feds and anyone else evil. Here, the evil dick is The Cowboy, a mercenary who grew up watching westerns and decided to model is whole vibe off it. So, hat, mirrored shades, western clothes and a shiny Smith and Wesson M29 .44 Magnum. He's a worthy opponent to our buddy Mack and a real slimy bastard you want to see get his componence. 

Mack finds himself in an isolated farmhouse with a crotchety old WWII vet, his nice lady wife and their conveniently widowed (and hot) daughter-in-law. Gee, I wonder what happens with her and Mack. Besides some random henchmen that's our whole cast of characters, which is pretty refreshing since a lot of Men's Adventure can get bogged down in side characters and extra plots. This one's a straight-ahead siege tale, like Mack Bolan starring in Assault on Precinct 13. Mack doesn't have all his gear, making do with a pump-action .22 and some MacGyver'd grenades. It's a real quick tale that barrels to its finish with a little humor and a lot of action.

In a lot of ways this feels like a modern action tale with its stripped-down feeling, you could easily see this being a DTV action film starring Michael Jai White or Scott Adkins. It might have been a great place to start a film series for Bolan back in the 80s, certainly would have been cheap enough to film. I think I like these early Gold Eagle's before it became such a factory set up and the early authors like Newton and Mertz actually knew Pendleton and made some effort to mold his style into the house style. But they're a little looser too with great ideas like this one and Mertz's Return to Vietnam.  

I'm far from a Bolan expert, but I always enjoy dipping my toe into the waters occasionally. This might be my favorite Executioner novel I've read, even more so than some of Pendleton's own work. It's exactly what I want when I pick up this kind of novel. It moved, the characters were well-defined within the story, and action ruled. This copy had an ad to join and get the "Live Large" bumper sticker in it and if the offer was still valid, I'd send away for it for sure. 

And my now traditional sign-off, my first novel Gunpowder Breath is available on Amazon as an eBook!

QUICK SHOTS: The Executioner #276: Levithan by Don (Gerald Montgomery) Pendelton

 

It's hard to believe that this is the first adventure of Mack Bolan I've reviewed here on the blog. The true Men's Adventure paperback boom started with our man, Mack. Sure, there's Bond roots, there's Mike Hammer roots, Matt Helm roots. But the idea of the numbered book with the continuing bloody adventures of a singular man pretty much started with War Against the Mafia. Book #1 is a stone-cold classis a slim masterclass in action writing. Then obviously after 30-something books Don Pendleton was a little done with Bolan and Gold Eagle stepped in with a plethora of ghostwriters. Some fantastic, some not-so-much. Thinking about it, I rarely dig my toe into the Bolan universe, I guess I think of them a bit to "normal" in the action-adventure field and I usually crave the wilder/weirder tales. 

That's called a lead-in. 

Probably like any series that gets into the high 200's things are bound to get a little odd. That's exactly what began to happen with the Bolan books (might have to read more of this late-period ones) and Bolan found himself fighting more sci-fi-type villains and more outlandish plots. So, in Levithan Mack Bolan fights Cthulhu. Oh, and Hunter S. Thompson is there too. 

The plot is kinda out there, more akin to a Destroyer novel (Remo kicked Cthulhu in #139 Dream thing) but it's Bolan who gets roped into heading off to a converted oil platform to take care of this monster that keeps killing people. The people are bad dudes, the mafia has team-up with a drug kingpin plus the evil CIA to turn the platform into a sovereign nation to allow all the drugs/prostitution they can get. Only a nearby evil cult has taken offense, and their tentacle-packed ancient god is angry and killing everyone on the platform. A lot of the book reads like a B-Horror movie with a secluded cast and a rampaging monster. 

To stop it Bolan is sent in with Dr. West from Miskatonic University (watch Re-Animator if you don't get that reference) and FBI Mallory Harmon who is an X-Files-kind of FBI agent. Harmon is the real star of the book. It's like an episode of an old TV show where they are trying to do a spin-off and the main characters take a backseat. Between her, Dr. West, the Hunter S. Thompson stand-in and the villains, Bolan doesn't have a lot to do. Harmon has surer footing in the weird trappings of the story and Bolan is just sort of "there." Not saying that he doesn't blow plenty of bad guys away with his Desert Eagle, but it was clear that Montgomery was more interested in Harmon and her underwear. There's lots of talk and scenes/descriptions of her underwear. Including her introductory bit where she blows away a Hills Have Eyes-type clan in her bra and panties. Then stands around talking to her FBI colleagues without dressing.

The guys from Able Team show up to help, Bolan's brother has a small B-story and there's stuff with the evil cult too. There's a lot of stuff jammed into this 200-ish page books. Which is ultimately it's down fall. I've heard rumor that it was supposed to be a longer Super Bolan book then got cut down which would make sense. Montgomery can spin a yarn though; I can't say I was ever bored with it. The action is rolls along quickly and the pages flew by so whatever quibbles I had; they were easy to get over. 

I imagine this bend on the Executioner series was a weird one for diligent readers to take at the time and it doesn't really seem like they ever got this odd again. Let me know if they do though! I had a fun time with this one and its Halloween season so it's nice to read about monsters and people with machine guns fighting them. Spooky.