Caribbean Kill: Mack Bolan: The Executioner #10

The Executioner #10

by Don Pendleton

Police in thirty states are on the lookout for Mack Bolan. The FBI is on his trail. He's on Interpol's red list. There is virtually no law enforcement agency unfamiliar with his name, or his game.

But the people most anxious to put him out of business are on the other side of the law: that organized cartel of crime and corruption. Yes, J. Edgar, there really IS a Mafia!

Bolan's sole purpose in life is to exterminate it. In this, the tenth chapter in his Doomsday Book, the Executioner invades the Mafia strongholds in the Caribbean.

Genres: Adventure, Fiction, Thriller, Action, Mystery Thriller, Pulp

Mass Market Paperback

First published January 1, 1972

About the author

Don Pendleton was born in Little Rock, Arkansas, December 12, 1927 and died October 23, 1995 in Arizona.

He wrote mystery, action/adventure, science-fiction, crime fiction, suspense, short stories, nonfiction, and was a comic scriptwriter, poet, screenwriter, essayist, and metaphysical scholar. He published more than 125 books in his long career, and his books have been published in more than 25 foreign languages with close to two hundred million copies in print throughout the world.

After producing a number of science-fiction and mystery novels, Don launched in 1969 the phenomenal Mack Bolan: The Executioner, which quickly emerged as the original, definitive Action/Adventure series. His successful paperback books inspired a new particularly American literary genre during the early 1970's, and Don became known as "the father of action/adventure."

"Although The Executioner Series is far and away my most significant contribution to world literature, I still do not perceive myself as 'belonging' to any particular literary niche. I am simply a storyteller, an entertainer who hopes to enthrall with visions of the reader's own incipient greatness."

Don Pendleton's original Executioner Series are now in ebooks, published by Open Road Media. 37 of the original novels.

Wikipedia: Don Pendleton

Reviews

[Bill Riggs · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fast paced old school adventure with the Executioner taking his war on the Mafia to the Caribbean. Grimaldi is the highlight in this thrilling adventure.

[Mike · Rating 4 out of 5]

Early 70 men's adventure series, with Bolan jumping from Vegas to paradise chasing Mafia baddies.

[Edwin · Rating 4 out of 5]

A compressed timeline story that also further introduces Jack Grimaldi, a mob plane and chopper pilot, who later changes his allegiance to Bolan. The novel takes up immediately after the events in Las Vegas (Vegas Vendetta) and into reliable Don Pendleton high gear with some terrific action and adventure sequences. There are no dull Mafia backstories, females needing protection to advance the plot, no fat to trim, just flat out action. Yeah, the violence and gore can be a bit disturbing so the book may not appeal to most readers. On the Executioner/Bolan scale I give this four solid stars, one of the better of the early novels in the series.

[Josh Hitch · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a nice edition to the series. Bolan ends up in the Caribbean at a hard site for the mafia and makes his normal grand entrance. He ends up helping a undercover female cop and finds out some info about a big chief that was running the show from Haiti, so of course that is where he heads.

Recommended, a good example of Pendleton's work with plenty of action and a nice pace that never gets boring.

[Chris Haynes · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was the 10th book in The Executioner series. This time Bolan heads to the Caribbean to take on the mob.

I found this book to be kind of boring. There wasn't as much action as in other volumes and what action there was was kind of boring. At one point, he throws a bomb onto a boat, blows up all the bad guys and sails off on another boat. He had been hiding from these guys for half the book and he takes care of them in a couple of paragraphs. He then flys on to Haiti, sneaks into a very secure compound, kills the leader there and gets away in a couple of pages. It was just too easy.

One of the highlights of this volume was Jack Grimaldi. He had a lot of screen time in this volume and this is the point where he joins the Bolan team.

It was an OK book but kind of boring.

[Luke Sims-Jenkins · Rating 4 out of 5]

Caribbean Kill the 10th book in the Executioner series really clicked for me. A definite improvement over Vegas Vendetta. It also follows on directly from book 9 with Mack wanting to blitz the Caribbean carousel. I like that Pendleton will bring in villains from previous books whilst also creating new allies that hopefully will carry over. Decent continuity for a series of books this old.

[Kaj Samuelsson · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is probably the Bolan book that I remember best from reading it 30 years ago. It was still good and worth reading, as all the Don Pendelton books.

[James Hein · Rating 3 out of 5]

Yes, two in a row as they are such a quick read.

This is another one located outside of the Continental US.

[Douglas Fugate · Rating 4 out of 5]

Another of the Mack Bolan series. I read them all when they first came out and still find them a great escape read.

[ShanDizzy · Rating 3 out of 5]

The single purpose of Mack Bolan’s life was to stop the Mafia wherever he found their leeching tentacles of influence—to jar their omnipotence, to confound their brilliance at organization, and to rid the earth of their oppressive weight. Others had failed in that purpose. The combined talents of law-enforcement agencies the world over had been failing for longer than Mack Bolan had been alive. Competitive syndicates and rival gangs had arisen to challenge the awesome power of La Cosa Nostra, only to be immediately snuffed out or absorbed by the invisible empire. So what made a lone man, totally unsupported by anything other than his own wits and will, think that he could succeed where so many others had failed?

The mob was expecting Bolan to spend his blood in an isolated jungle of America’s back yard, against a ragtag army of mercenaries, while their prized little playground carousel continued merrily and unthreatened along its profitable course.

"A guy I met in Vegas,” he’d told her, “wrapped up the whole rotten mess in just four words. Ants at a picnic. That’s the mob. They don’t build or produce, they just plunder. And wherever the picnic is, that’s where you’ll find them swarming."

Read this book on Scribd: https://www.scribd.com/book/244680380

[Tom · Rating 2 out of 5]

I think Pendleton benefits from having a specific setting to work off of, so this one is a little too vague to hit the sweet spot. In my opinion, these books tend to be better when there's a mixture of planning, action, and scenery, but this one leans a bit far in the action direction for my tastes (though it might be around the average for the series as a whole).

[Gilbert Stack · Rating 3 out of 5]

Mack Bolan is killing mafiosos again in this 1972 novel from the Executioner series. If you’ve read any of these early books you know that there is not a lot of deep thought required to enjoy them. The plot is always roughly the same. Mack Bolan arrives in an area where the mafia is and starts killing them. At some point in the story, innocent people will become involved and Bolan will risk life and limb to get them out of danger. Finally, things will look really dark before the dawn when Bolan walks away the last man standing.

The only real difference in Caribbean Kill is that Bolan is flying into a trap—a trap he seems amazingly unprepared for since he clearly believed it would be there. The opening chapters were a lot of fun as Bolan evades the initial efforts of the mob to bring him down, but after that the story begins to soften around the edges and blur into fairly mindless action. If you like the high-action low-thought formula, you’ll enjoy this novel, but it’s not one of the more memorable ones.

If you liked this review, you can find more at www.gilbertstack.com/reviews.

[Viva · Rating 3 out of 5]

Continuing pulp fiction action saga of Mack Bolan. It's best to start from #1 but it's ok to skip books in the series because each book starts with a prologue that summarizes the story.

This time Bolan hits Puerto Rico and Haiti to defeat the mob there. I'm getting to like the series less and less as the author tries too hard to pontificate the evils of a global evil. I'm pretty much here for the violence and sex and not for a lot of deep thinking. There's just too much stuff on the background bigger evil and I skipped over all that part plus this didn't have a very concrete ending.

[Todd · Rating 5 out of 5]

Action/Adventure At It's Very Best!!!

As always the master of action/adventure fiction the legendary Don Pendleton delivers absolute perfection!!! Mack Bolan aka The Executioner takes us along with him to the picturesque Caribbean to battle the cancerous head of evil known as the mafia. This is definitely one of the most interesting locals for a Mack Bolan adventure.

[Mike · Rating 4 out of 5]

A continuation of the vendetta for soldier Bolan. Escaping the mob and the law in Vegas, he rides the logical next stop to Puerto Rico and Haiti, because the Mafia bucks don't stop in the States. Good action yarn from men's action/adventure author Pendleton.

[Brad Theado · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not the best of the series. Way too much introspection. Not enough action.

[Davidus1 · Rating 5 out of 5]

Enjoyed it! A good read!

[Joe Nelson · Rating 5 out of 5]

After the lackluster Vegas Vendetta, Don Pendleton returns to a more fighting form with the tenth novel in his landmark action series.

This chapter of Mack Bolan's saga begins right where the last left off, with Mack enroute to Puerto Rico to crush a Caribbean Carousel the Mafia has been using to funnel drugs and other illicit goods into the States. And this bit of continuity is quickly tossed aside after Bolan's explosive arrival, in a sequence that would top most action movies, with a plane crashing into a beachside manor, dozens of gunmen, and the Executioner stalking his enemies in the jungle. All in the introductory chapters!

The overarching plot is then helpfully ignored as Bolan rescues an undercover lady cop and tangles with a Mafia headhunter he had thought killed during an earlier adventure.

Pendleton is at his best when he writes a personal, less grandiose type of thriller, and this is exactly that, with Bolan having plenty of individual lives to rescue, including said lady cop and a young man and his pregnant wife who try to aid the Executioner. This novel even marks the proper appearance of recurring Bolanverse regular Jack Grimaldi, an ace Mafia pilot who is converted to the side of righteous butt-kicking by simply being in Bolan's awe-inspiring aura.

And that might be the one factor that turns off potential readers; anyone expecting a realistic, grim and gritty portrayal of vigilante action might be disappointed that by this stage in the series, Mack Bolan had been turned into something of a superman. He does no wrong and anyone around him, friend and foe alike, are swayed by his awesome charisma into helping in his war everlasting. I don't mind the comicbook heroics and monologuing moralizations, but not everyone will be in my camp.

My only complaint is that after the bombastic opening, the action sequences are far more pedestrian in nature. They aren't bad, but when you open with a house being explosively murdered by seaplane, it becomes a high water-mark that is impossible to top.

The end is also a little hurried, with a secondary climax that feels like a misfire compared to what came before.

But even with these imperfections, we have a solid entry in the series, with excellent characters, snappy dialogue, and Pendleton's flair for bullet-riddled action. A great chaser to help forget the taste of the Vegas Vendetta.

[Daniel · Rating 3 out of 5]

Read this one out of order as I had a yen for the Caribbean. Unfortunately, it's not much of a travelogue, aside from some facts about Haiti no doubt gleamed from the encyclopedia.

Surprisingly, there's a good amount of continuity here. This one apparently picks up right where the last book (about Las Vegas) left off. It's not exactly Trotsky, so it's easy to follow along anyway. Mack Bolan is in a hijacked plane full of money, about to be ambushed, but manages to slip the net and then turn the tables on the small army of pursuers the Mob has after him. Despite the evocative detail that this is more or less the same surroundings as the Vietnam War, where he cut his teeth, we don't get much jungle warfare. Bolan soon loses all pursuit and hooks up with a hot-to-trot Latina cop and an unfathomably loyal contact, who apparently is a fanboy of his, because I can't come up with another reason this guy has to be so helpful to someone he just met.

Laziness aside, we get some deep thoughts and PG-rated lovemaking (lots of Harlequin-esque prose--"The war faded, hell wavered, and even damnation lost its sting as Bolan and the law traded points of reality, and merged them, and expanded them into that all-consuming flame which is known only to those who live largely, love largely, and fully expect to die in the same manner." Seriously.) Bolan is surprisingly hippieish in his spiritual navel-gazing, but I suppose that makes sense for a Vietnam vet. They couldn't have all skipped to Canada, after all.

With the book 3/4 done, Bolan manages to take out every established villain, but Don hasn't hit his word count, so we're suddenly introduced to another crime boss in the area that Bolan quickly adds to the kill count. I suppose I should appreciate that instead of padding things out, Pendleton basically throws in an extra short story to make this thing novel-length, then wraps things up with the assurance that next week will bring more adventure. Wait, has each book basically been a week in the life of Mack Bolan, in real time? Because how avant-garde would that be for pulp fiction.

[Curtis]

As someone who writes both fiction and nonfiction, I've learned how important it is for me to know my ending before I get started. I'm aware that some writers like to discover their ending without much forethought. Don Pendleton is one of those writers (as detailed by the author himself in an interview featured in the 50 Year Anniversary biography written by his wife).

In some of Pendleton's stories, this writing strategy results in a fun, fast-paced thrill ride of a book. Other times, it leaves this reader a bit frustrated. Case in point, Caribbean Kill. Bolan has no specific objective here. He simply reacts to events that happen to him. As a reader, I feel like a kite with no string. What's the point? Where is the story moving to? What's the story about even? That last question nags at me for the duration of the read.

The last time I remember feeling this way was in book 5, I think. Interesting because this book almost reads like a remake of that one. Same antagonist, literally (the character Tony Lavagni is back and hunting Bolan just like he did in book 5). Similar setting for the climax: Another night-time ambush on a dock in a deserted marina, which Bolan fights through and then escapes on a boat.

The most interesting part for me was the little mini-story at the end. In the final two chapters, Bolan island hops from Puerto Rico to Haiti to assassinate a high-level criminal who turns out to be a one-percenter, in today's lingo. Not a mobster but an American corporate business magnate. In Bolan's words: "This guy didn't steal nickels and dimes. He built and perpetuated ghettoes...." I'm curious if this signals a shift in the storyline at all. Will Bolan take on white collar criminals and systemic forces of greed in future chapters? As much fun as it is to imagine him blowing up Wall Street, I don't think I should get my hopes too high.

[Alan · Rating 3 out of 5]

Rating 3

for me this was a curiously flat read tbh.
The story itself takes place over a couple of days, therefore a very concentrated time period, and follows on directly from the previous novel set in Las Vegas.
There are the usual action scenes, a local official unofficially helping Bolan, some innocent locals getting caught up in the blitz and having to be rescued by Bolan…..but this time around it feels slightly off for some reason.
On the plus side it does bring back the pilot Grimaldi and ensures that he will become another ally going forward on the last mile.
Basically an okay read but in the bottom half of the first 10 books.
Read as a continuation/sequel to the vegas novel or to see when Grimaldi joins Bolan but otherwise could probably be skipped unless reading the complete series.

[Quentin Wallace · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5 Stars

Another good entry into the Bolan series. The books are a bit formulaic, but I suppose that can be said of the Men's Adventure genre in general. This time Bolan takes his battle to Puerto Rico and Haiti, and I couldn't help but think of Live and Let Die in parts. There's a sexy woman involved as usual, and plenty of bad guys get dead.

I still find it strange how Bolan manages to literally just walk into Mafia strongholds by bluffing his way in. It happens in almost every volume of the series, too. He also gets some bad guys to flip pretty easily, but once again, this is basically pulp fiction and not every character is going to be incredibly deep.

If you like the Bolan series, this one won't disappoint.

[J. Gary · Rating 3 out of 5]

The plot for this book is not believable. I understand some license with reality since we are talking about fiction, but the situations that Mack Bolan gets into are not realistic. No one would be able to pull off what Bolan does in this book. No one would put themselves in such situations intentionally.

Ii is also hard to accept the idea that Bolan would go on this execution tour, killing so many people beyond the ones directly responsible for the death of his family. I doubt that many people could keep the fires stoked long enough and intense enough to seek revenge for such a long time without people to emotionally support them.

It was an easy read and entertaining as long as you are more interested in the characters than the plot.

[GhostofMyrtle]

The Executioner (Matt Bolan) doing what The Executioner does. This time in the Caribbean. The blurb on the back "...the odds aren't in his favour..." (no surprise there) but "...all the scores are."

There is continuity with these books with recurring characters but basically they are formulaic (although it is notable that one character in this one seems to swap sides) and if you have read one, well, you pretty much know what you are going to get with the others: Bolan doing a lot of killing and bedding at least one woman.

On the other hand, who couldn't enjoy reading about the Mafia getting it's arse kicked, even if it's just in a novel?

[Al Cormier · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read this as an in-between book. It was quick and full of action. While the style is a bit chauvinistic, and some of today's readers may take offense at the racial references, I tend to chalk them up to the cultural norms of adventure writers of the sixties and seventies, and refuse to let them sour my reading experience.

From the beginning, Bolan comes off as a cold-blooded soldier with a philosophical tilt, and a soft humanistic underbelly. I am enjoying reading the series from the beginning :o)

[George Bowser · Rating 4 out of 5]

Typical Bolan!

Lots of action, lots of mayhem, a gorgeous girl or two, and dead Mafioso. My only issue is the amount introspection on Bolan's part. I understand he's fighting overwhelming odds, but Hearing about it at length every other page gets old.

[Monica Willyard Moen · Rating 4 out of 5]

In this outing, the Executioner heads to Puerto Rico to pursue his mission of destroying the mafia. In this book, he finally meets someone who will become a friend and partner in many future missions, Jack, A former military pilot who was doing some charter work for the mafia.

[Richard · Rating 4 out of 5]

A lot of action

There is a lot of action with a final ending for some. The characters worth either good or bad, no middle ground. The whole book takes place in a little over a day and you can’t keep count of the bodies.

[DOUGLAS J BERRY · Rating 5 out of 5]

Kill them all, god will know his own.

Prime freebie. Don Pendleton writes good action adventures. Mack Bolan is cruising around Puerto Rico and shooting up the mafia again. Puerto Rico is a interesting country, wish they would accept statehood.

[Larry Myers]

Enjoyed the book, I read the series years ago, but it was a good read.