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.
Well we’ve reached book 100 in the eponymous series…or about a quarter of the way through the main stories in this never ending set of books.
As the 100th book, Blood Testament is, unsurprisingly, a brutal, action-packed thriller that doesn't hold back. From the first chapter, in which Hal Bragnola’s family is kidnapped in an effort to get Hal to turn evidence over to the CIA, the story pulls you into a world of violence, vengeance, and relentless bloodshed, with Mack Bolan, the infamous "Executioner," carving his way through enemies with his typical cold attitude towards those who would abuse their power. T
he action is fast-paced and unapologetically brutal, with every chapter delivering intense combat sequences and high-stakes encounters. The violence is graphic and raw, often leaning into a mean-spirited tone that feels almost nihilistic at times. There's a palpable sense of moral grayness that permeates the entire narrative—Bolan isn’t just fighting criminals; he’s dismantling an entire corrupt system with his own brand of merciless justice.
The action is relentless, but this is also where the novel begins to show its weaknesses. At 250 pages, Blood Testament isn’t very long but it feels a bit stretched out—there are moments when the constant action and grim atmosphere is punctuated with lengthy diatribes about moral choices and the difference between right and wrong. This quickly begins to wear thin, and the story starts to drag. The repetitive nature of some sequences doesn’t help, either, as the book occasionally lingers too long on the violence without enough variation in the plot to keep things fresh. I found myself wishing the book were shorter, or that the action were more tightly woven into the overall storyline.
Despite that, Blood Testament is a thrilling, no-holds-barred ride for fans of high-octane action and vigilante justice. The dark, mean-spirited atmosphere gives it a it more of a “mature” edge than other previous books in the series and, as The New War shifted Bolan’s focus, I feel Blood Testament might do this as well.