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Super Bolan #6
Dead Easy
A high-speed train races across the Italian countryside on the overnight run from Rome to Vienna.
Suddenly a powerful explosion rips through the predawn darkness, buckling coaches and derailing the express.
The toll: sixty dead.
It's the beginning of a string of events that weaves a web of intrigue and terror. . . a string manipulated by a KGB-Mafia connection determined to shatter America's economic powerbase.
Suddenly a powerful explosion rips through the predawn darkness, buckling coaches and derailing the express.
The toll: sixty dead.
It's the beginning of a string of events that weaves a web of intrigue and terror. . . a string manipulated by a KGB-Mafia connection determined to shatter America's economic powerbase.
- GenresFiction
379 pages, Paperback
First published September 1, 1986
1 person is currently reading
26 people want to read
About the author
Don Pendleton
1,517 books188 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 - 3 of 3 reviews
August 30, 2024
At face value Dead Easy has one of the best covers in the eponymous spin off series of The Executioner; A hand clutching a bundle of dynamite that’s obviously going to be used on the train in the background sets up what should be an absolutely epic series of events featuring terrorists, explosions, and Mack Bolan coming to save the day.
And yet Dead Easy is hands down the weakest of this series so far.
The train incident does happen but it’s mostly alluded to or explained in a way that makes it incredibly boring. And Peter Leslie somehow manages to make basically everything in this book boring. Bolan is still totally kick ass (almost too much…which I’ll explain in a moment), yet most of this particular entry into his solo work is him just wondering around a multitude of countries, killing paint by number bad guys, and then moving to the next sidequest until he ends up discovering that things aren’t what they seem and everything he thought he believed about the bad guys who blew up the train is totally wrong. And the reason behind all of this is really quite silly and pointless. (Full disclosure: I skipped like 65 pages just to get to the end and didn’t feel like I missed a single thing).
And even that wouldn’t be totally awful except Leslie has totally forgotten the character Bolan is supposed to be. There’s flashes of Pendleton’s original creation, yet Leslie takes Bolan and makes him spiteful, angry, and far more heartless than he usually is. Leslie even goes as far as to make Bolan utter more than a handful of four letter curse words (which was something Pendleton purposely avoided writing). Bolan also is basically indestructible this time around and while that’s always been the case, the amount of incidents he somehow manages to survive is far beyond the normal amount we usually see.
The original purpose of these Mack Bolan spinoffs were to showcase a bunch of crossover events between Bolan, Able Team, Phoenix Force, and members of the Stony Man farm. Somewhere along the line, that idea looks to be Completely forgotten and we get books like this: just another Executioner novel that is bland and bloated…which is saying a lot since I freaking love the Executioner series.
And yet Dead Easy is hands down the weakest of this series so far.
The train incident does happen but it’s mostly alluded to or explained in a way that makes it incredibly boring. And Peter Leslie somehow manages to make basically everything in this book boring. Bolan is still totally kick ass (almost too much…which I’ll explain in a moment), yet most of this particular entry into his solo work is him just wondering around a multitude of countries, killing paint by number bad guys, and then moving to the next sidequest until he ends up discovering that things aren’t what they seem and everything he thought he believed about the bad guys who blew up the train is totally wrong. And the reason behind all of this is really quite silly and pointless. (Full disclosure: I skipped like 65 pages just to get to the end and didn’t feel like I missed a single thing).
And even that wouldn’t be totally awful except Leslie has totally forgotten the character Bolan is supposed to be. There’s flashes of Pendleton’s original creation, yet Leslie takes Bolan and makes him spiteful, angry, and far more heartless than he usually is. Leslie even goes as far as to make Bolan utter more than a handful of four letter curse words (which was something Pendleton purposely avoided writing). Bolan also is basically indestructible this time around and while that’s always been the case, the amount of incidents he somehow manages to survive is far beyond the normal amount we usually see.
The original purpose of these Mack Bolan spinoffs were to showcase a bunch of crossover events between Bolan, Able Team, Phoenix Force, and members of the Stony Man farm. Somewhere along the line, that idea looks to be Completely forgotten and we get books like this: just another Executioner novel that is bland and bloated…which is saying a lot since I freaking love the Executioner series.
February 10, 2016
Mack Bolan is a cheeseburger: easily consumed, filling and momentarily satisfying, and the same every time you eat it. That said, it's a two star book (4 stars if you are physically, mentally or emotionally a 13 year-old male, who seems to be the ideal demographic for 80's action pulp). It's just a cheeseburger - the ingredients are plain and are put together in an uninspired formula right out of Creative Writing 101.
SPOILER ALERT!!!: Misunderstood good guy wins. Kills many people. Out of bounds moral righteousness wins out. Survives with nary a scratch. Ends up in the sack with the girl at the end.
More than $1.50 in the used bin is overpayment, but if you want something to read on the beach while getting totally hammered and then leave it in the sand for the next guy, then any Mack Bolan book is perfect.
P.S. - by the time I was 1/3 of the way through the book, I had read the word "unleathered" more times than in the rest of my life combined. "Pulled, drew, readied, unholstered, aimed, prepared, unleashed, freed" - all viable alternatives to describe the act of moving gun from holster to hand. . .
Thesaurus - buy one.
SPOILER ALERT!!!: Misunderstood good guy wins. Kills many people. Out of bounds moral righteousness wins out. Survives with nary a scratch. Ends up in the sack with the girl at the end.
More than $1.50 in the used bin is overpayment, but if you want something to read on the beach while getting totally hammered and then leave it in the sand for the next guy, then any Mack Bolan book is perfect.
P.S. - by the time I was 1/3 of the way through the book, I had read the word "unleathered" more times than in the rest of my life combined. "Pulled, drew, readied, unholstered, aimed, prepared, unleashed, freed" - all viable alternatives to describe the act of moving gun from holster to hand. . .
Thesaurus - buy one.
March 28, 2020
not the best executed!
Probably the worst Bolan so far, shame.
Probably the worst Bolan so far, shame.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews