Dragon's Kill

Phoenix Force #7

by Gar Wilson

The Japanese Red Cell had discovered a method of extracting information from any subject. The terrorist had kidnapped two American intelligence officers, drained them of their secrets, then used the information to commit barbarous acts of sabotage.

Mack Bolan's counterterror team, Phoenix Force, was unleashed with orders to destroy the cancerous Red Cell. The enemy stronghold was a terror factory tucked into a coffee plantation in the tropical paradise of Hawaii.

But, as Bolan's battle-wise warriors stalked their quarry, the Red Cell abducted another victim - the deputy director of the CIA. If the CIA man talked, global stability would be gone. Phoenix Force must hit. Hit hard. Hit fast.

Genres: Fiction, Action

189 pages, Paperback

First published September 1, 1983

About the author

Phoenix Force is a series of action-adventure novels first published in 1982 by American Gold Eagle publishers. It is a spin-off of the Executioner series created by Don Pendleton.

Phoenix Force is one of two neutralization teams working for Stony Man, a top-secret anti-terrorist organization. As with The Executioner, the Phoenix Force novels have been written by a succession of authors under the pseudonym Gar Wilson. In 1991, Gold Eagle combined Phoenix Force with another Executioner spin-off series, Able Team, and launched the Stony Man book series, which is still being published as of 2005.

Reviews

[Dave · Rating 1 out of 5]

Have you ever wanted to see how poorly of a book could be published? Here's your chance! The characters are flat, are never shown in danger, and the writing is absolutely atrocious. To paraphrase from one of the "climatic" fight scenes: "He punched the goon in the solar plexus, causing his intestines to erupt and he died." I'm really not sure how the anatomy works in Phoenix Force world.

It started out okay, but it appeared the author was coming up on his deadline, and was like "shit, it's a subscription novel service, it's not Hemingway." I mean, I don't read Mack Bolin stories for the high class writing - I read them for the escapism and the good guy always winning. But even beyond that there's gotta be like a level of writing for the story to really be any account.

If I were you, I'd give this book a pass.

[Wayne · Rating 3 out of 5]

The force goes from Japan to Hawaii to stop a crazed Japanese American from extracting info from high ranking military officials. The action comes hot and heavy in this one. You know that the bad guys are going to get theirs, and Phoenix Force will come out unscathed. It's still fun to to see what kind of carnage the guys will do though.

[John · Rating 1 out of 5]

I usually try not to make reviews about me, but I think I have to do that at least a little bit with this one. I first read this book when it came out, when I was 13. I loved it back then. It has not aged well.

This is a poorly written "men's" adventure book. I put "men's" in quotes, because I'm pretty sure that I represented the demographics of their primary audience as a 13 year old boy. It's the kind of book where no one ever fires a "gun" or even a "pistol", "rifle", or "sub-machine gun". They fire a "H&K G3 SG1", and each bullet from that "H&K G3 SG1" is lovingly described in terms of the vertebrae it smashes through, or the way it smashes jaws and teeth on its way to lodge in the brain.

The opponents are "terrorists". We never really learn what cause they fight for until the very end, although communism is mentioned, and Marxist professors are blamed for their recruitment earlier in the book. At the end we learn the big bad behind it all wants to create a new "Empire of Japan" ruled by him, but somehow still being a "Marxist-socialist" government. This muddled ideology exists solely to make the reader feel good about the protagonists gunning down men and women without any compassion, because they are the "baddies".

It would be completely laughable if it weren't for the fact that this "socialism is bad" propaganda was aimed at impressionable young boys, and probably had a real effect on developing the attitudes of some Gen X men today.

As the mention of an "Empire of Japan" probably suggests, this particular book is full of Orientalism and Japanese fetishism with references to various aspects of Japanese culture that the author obviously only has a passing understanding of. At least the fact that these books were aimed at 13 year olds spares us from any sexual fetishizing, as there's no sex or romance here at all (a big clue as to the true target audience).

I have to mention that despite the huge emphasis on detailing military hardware, they can get very basic things wrong. At one point they have the entire five person Phoenix Force team flown into Hawaii aboard an F-4 Phantom, complete with their gear. That must have been a very uncomfortable flight in a 2-seater fighter jet.

This book is simply not worth reading. The only reason I finished it was because it was so short to begin with, and I wanted to write this review. I will now return the copy I read to the little free library I found it in. Any nostalgia I felt for it dissipated by actually reading it.

[Josh Hitch · Rating 4 out of 5]

Probably more like a 3.5, it really is a mindless action novel. Though that's exactly what you are looking for with anything involving the Executioner. Were a few funny lines and a lot of death, done right by author William Fieldhouse, who wrote most of the series.

Recommended for fans of Men's Adventures. And though it's not the best by any means of the genre, it's a solid mid line mark to give you an ideal what the genre is like.

[Holly Stone · Rating 3 out of 5]

I'd almost forgotten how quick these books are to read and how much I enjoyed them. The Original Force is still all together in this book and they are trying to stop a Japanese Red Cell threat. Keio O'Hara, Yakov Katenelenbogen, Gary Manning, David McCarter, and Rafael Encizo make up the 5 man team known as Phoenix Force their mission to stop terror and destruction world wide and these 5 men are more than up to the task.

[Jason Mussett · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was the first Phoenix Force book I ever read, I borrowed it from a friend at school then I roared off to WH Smiths and bought the first six. Plenty of action, hand to hand combat and gun porn-I hate that word! I spent the whole school holidays with Phoenix Force, I remember my dad saying, "one day you'll be writing books. Well, I'm fifty now, so I haven't given up.

[David · Rating 3 out of 5]

Decent action story that seemed to end rather quickly. The final engagements happened very quickly ending the book.

[Opskar01 · Rating 3 out of 5]

liked--high school boys

[Little Timmy · Rating 3 out of 5]

A spin off series from his Executioner books. This series follows several secondary characters that band together. Recommended

[Louis · Rating 3 out of 5]

Pretty good. By this time, most of the books are the same sort of thing, but that's too be expected. Worth reading if you're a fan of the Force.