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Mack Bolan the Executioner #80
Running Hot
A new wave of crime is rocking the stability of France. And each incident is made to look like the work of foreign terrorists. But the atrocities are only part of a more ambitious plan.
In a desolate highland region, Mack Bolan unearths a complex where youthful derelicts of French society are educated in the art of terrorism. For those who graduate, the payment is high - free drugs.
The Executioner knows the principles of this "institute of higher learning" and he means to close the death school forever.
In a desolate highland region, Mack Bolan unearths a complex where youthful derelicts of French society are educated in the art of terrorism. For those who graduate, the payment is high - free drugs.
The Executioner knows the principles of this "institute of higher learning" and he means to close the death school forever.
- GenresFiction
Mass Market Paperback
First published July 1, 1985
69 people want to read
About the author
Don Pendleton
1,521 books183 followersDon 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
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
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
March 8, 2024
A nicely readable and fun piece of trash literature with a high violence quotient. Not any sex, surprisingly, but as this is my first Executioner book I may not yet be familiar with the formula. The plot is right-wing paranoiac fantasy, though with far-right Nazi thugs as its villains. Mack Bolan contends with all manner of youth scum on the streets and in the mountains of France; though this was released in 1985 it still uses terms like “beatnik” and “mod”, which were surely outdated by the mid-‘80s.
The story is vague and loosey-goosey but basically involves attempts by French Nazi-sympathisers to swing the political vote towards fascism, by creating a young voter base of terrorist thugs enslaved to refined narcotics. I was reminded a bit of McBain in The Simpsons, that show’s parody of Arnold Schwarzenegger-esque action thrillers, and in particular a scene whereby the baddie celebrates his invention of a drug “ten times more addictive than marijuana” before making the toast: “to human misery!”
Running Hot is hilariously violent. It opens on a car bomb that decapitates a newspaperman and proceeds through various assaults on faceless, jackbooted punks on motorcycles. This is clearly aimed at a middle-aged or older male audience and it really does seem to hate young people. We get a token tragic girl for plausible deniability purposes, but otherwise this is an old man’s fantasy of hurting and killing young punks. I found that a little troubling, but the book is written with such a fun, trashy focus on gonzo violence that it’s hard to not take it with good cheer.
The story is vague and loosey-goosey but basically involves attempts by French Nazi-sympathisers to swing the political vote towards fascism, by creating a young voter base of terrorist thugs enslaved to refined narcotics. I was reminded a bit of McBain in The Simpsons, that show’s parody of Arnold Schwarzenegger-esque action thrillers, and in particular a scene whereby the baddie celebrates his invention of a drug “ten times more addictive than marijuana” before making the toast: “to human misery!”
Running Hot is hilariously violent. It opens on a car bomb that decapitates a newspaperman and proceeds through various assaults on faceless, jackbooted punks on motorcycles. This is clearly aimed at a middle-aged or older male audience and it really does seem to hate young people. We get a token tragic girl for plausible deniability purposes, but otherwise this is an old man’s fantasy of hurting and killing young punks. I found that a little troubling, but the book is written with such a fun, trashy focus on gonzo violence that it’s hard to not take it with good cheer.
March 16, 2024
Paris is left reeling with the aftermath of deadly terrorist attacks so in steps Mack Bolan to try and single handedly save the city of lights from pro-fascist right wingers and the KGB, led, once again by Strakhov, Bolan’s arch nemesis since the Stony Man days.
Once Pendleton farmed out his creation to other authors, this series has been penned by quite a few different writers but Running Hot is the first of the group to not be credited to anyone. And that’s a shame because this one reads more like the fifth John Wick film than previous Executioner stories. It’s crammed full of non-stop action and violence. From car chases, to gun battles in the streets, to a full on assault of the lead terrorists’s compound, there is hardly any downtime. Bolan is also more badass than we’ve seen before. He shows basically zero mercy throughout the entirety of this novel and, I believe, makes for a better protagonist.
I’d be more than willing to give Running Hot an easy 4 or 5 stars for the action alone but the plot is on the weaker side. The villains in The Executioner series are hardly ever that believable, but Treynet, our main baddie in the book just never feels fully realized and his motivation was weak. Teaming up with the KGB felt ramrodded in to keep readers invested in Bolan’s constant war with Strakhov. And, overall, the whole thing was all over the place, meaning it was hard to follow or stay interested when the gunshots and bloodshed died down.
Maybe that’s why the author remains unknown…
Once Pendleton farmed out his creation to other authors, this series has been penned by quite a few different writers but Running Hot is the first of the group to not be credited to anyone. And that’s a shame because this one reads more like the fifth John Wick film than previous Executioner stories. It’s crammed full of non-stop action and violence. From car chases, to gun battles in the streets, to a full on assault of the lead terrorists’s compound, there is hardly any downtime. Bolan is also more badass than we’ve seen before. He shows basically zero mercy throughout the entirety of this novel and, I believe, makes for a better protagonist.
I’d be more than willing to give Running Hot an easy 4 or 5 stars for the action alone but the plot is on the weaker side. The villains in The Executioner series are hardly ever that believable, but Treynet, our main baddie in the book just never feels fully realized and his motivation was weak. Teaming up with the KGB felt ramrodded in to keep readers invested in Bolan’s constant war with Strakhov. And, overall, the whole thing was all over the place, meaning it was hard to follow or stay interested when the gunshots and bloodshed died down.
Maybe that’s why the author remains unknown…
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews