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Mack Bolan the Executioner #276
Leviathan
When Mack Bolan goes undercover to destroy an offshore drilling rig that is being used as a narcotics manufacuring plant financed by corrupt CIA agents and the Mafia, the rig is attacked by otherworldly creatures who have a deadly mission of their own. Original.
- GenresCthulhu Mythos
224 pages, Mass Market Paperback
First published November 1, 2001
30 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 - 4 of 4 reviews
July 12, 2016
There's a point in this book where the Executioner (basically, the Punisher) and some Mafia goons are barricaded in the same room while Cthulhu avatars, giant squids, and Miskatonic University professors are all running around outside.
I think that highlights the embarrassed schizophrenia of this book.
The Executioner is a series so old, it's a men's fiction institution. The mob killed Mack Bolan's family, and he kills the mob. If you've heard this before, it's because another version of him's more popular. In the 70's, Marvel Comics was copying things left and right. Kung Fu is popular? Give them Shang Chi: The Master of Kung Fu. Blaxploitation? Luke Cage. Satanism? The Son of Satan. Mack Bolan? Why, we'll make . . .
I read a few Executioner novels in high school. My standard back then was the violence and sex ratio of Phantom Force . . .
. . . published long after Mack had killed so many mobsters that he signed up with the CIA to get more suggestions for people to shoot. Twenty years later, I don't remember anything about this .357 magnum opus except that a naked psychic woman gets decapitated in a hot tub. At fifteen, that was Dostoyevsky.
So, why the hell is he fighting Cthulhu?
I think it's the nature of the series. A squad of ghost writers work hard to churn out Executioner novels monthly. This is a book series that you could buy a magazine-style subscription to. There's been over seven hundred Executioner novels, and eventually one of those poor souls handcuffed to the word processor ran out of ideas and threw some Lovecraft as a Hail Mary.
The hero of our book is special Agent Mallory Harmon. No, really, Mack is more of a confused spectator. She's a tough FBI agent who starts out gunning down swamp cultists in her undies before the feds send her on an adventure. With a sarcastic Miskatonic University professor at her side, the duo is ready to star in their own series of pulpy novels I would buy the hell out of. But Mack Bolan's on the cover, so he might as well come along.
There's an oil platform that's been turned into a sovereign nation of meth labs, and it must be shut down, Mack Bolan-style! Only problem is, the damn thing is surrounded by mind-controlled angry giant squids because it's built right where the cult of Cthulhu needs to do some rituals. So Mack and company must infiltrate the platform undercover and . . . get captured.
Seriously, Mack gets punked pretty easily, bound up, and nearly tortured. His escape takes up most of his scenes; there's staggering little he actually does here. I was stunned when I reached page 145 of an Executioner novel and Mack had only killed two people..
Meanwhile, Harmon and the professor run around, get shot at, use neuorolinguistic programming as a Jedi mind trick, and pick up a thinly veiled Hunter S. Thompson as a sidekick. Seriously, Mack Bolan could have called in sick; Harmon is the real protagonist, and she even gets the cool climatic fight scene that any action movie script would assign to the lead character. She makes the jokes and gets the one-liners. She has fun with it.
There's also a weird aside plot about Mack's private eye brother that reads like a 9-year-old Punisher fanatic tried to narrate the beginning of a Sam Spade novel. A gang member is force feed beer, people.
It's a very Executioner kind of writing style. This book describes guns like Tolkien describes trees and George R. R. Martin describes menus.
The best part about the book is the whale/squid war, though.
That . . . is some of the most original, imaginative science fiction world-building I've read all year. I was all in for the secret war between the squid and the whales the moment I read it. Sadly, we only get this perspective for about two full pages of text. Hell, reading this book was entirely worth it just to see this, and I wish it ended with an evil squid thing triple-teamed by Mack, Harmon, and a goddamned sperm whale just so I can see the good guys give a thumbs up to the whale as it swims off. Gerald Montgomery, write a damn book about the whale/squid war. It is your destiny.
So . . . how was the book?
Okay, let's make something clear. This is a men's adventure novel series in which a hard-jawed hero kills metric buttloads of people in ridiculous set pieces. That's fine. Seriously, that's totally fine. I read all of the Carson Napier of Venus series, and I'm currently reading Jewel of Tharn. I unabashedly love the Destroyer, and quote Chuin from the end of that movie constantly.
Yes, the genre can attract some really weird politics and racial portrayals, but I'm not dumping on this genre anymore than I'd dump on a Big Mac. Fine cuisine exists, but sometimes I want a damn Big Mac, and there is nothing wrong with loving this type of novel.
It's escapism, people, and C.S. Lewis was right when he said the only kind of people that have a problem with escaping are jailers.
Given that . . . this novel is awkward. It's crammed with good ideas that never connect. Let anyone who understands the following statement hear "The Executioner fights Cthulhu" and they'd expect more. There's good bits that never shake hands with each other, potential unfulfilled, and a few opportunities missed. This should be Mack Bolan's Delta Green adventure, but it isn't.
I really want to see Gerald Montgomery write the adventures of Agent Harmon and just throw gun porn and Lovecraft against each other.
Who knows? Maybe Montgomery wrote on a strict set of house guidelines. Maybe this is all he could get past his editors, and if so, I salute you, dear sir. I see what you wanted to do and, enjoyed it, and dearly wish you'd have done it a few more times. By book three in the Agent Harmon series, you'd have gold on your hands.
But I bet Mack Bolan rarely thinks about the one time he saw an honest-to-the-Outer-Gods Cthulhu idol. He's got work to do. As long as people are willing to vicariously live through a guy shooting whatever kinda people are in the headline news that day, the Executioner will has work to do.
And, hopefully, some day Agent Harmon will as well.
I think that highlights the embarrassed schizophrenia of this book.
The Executioner is a series so old, it's a men's fiction institution. The mob killed Mack Bolan's family, and he kills the mob. If you've heard this before, it's because another version of him's more popular. In the 70's, Marvel Comics was copying things left and right. Kung Fu is popular? Give them Shang Chi: The Master of Kung Fu. Blaxploitation? Luke Cage. Satanism? The Son of Satan. Mack Bolan? Why, we'll make . . .
I read a few Executioner novels in high school. My standard back then was the violence and sex ratio of Phantom Force . . .
. . . published long after Mack had killed so many mobsters that he signed up with the CIA to get more suggestions for people to shoot. Twenty years later, I don't remember anything about this .357 magnum opus except that a naked psychic woman gets decapitated in a hot tub. At fifteen, that was Dostoyevsky.
So, why the hell is he fighting Cthulhu?
I think it's the nature of the series. A squad of ghost writers work hard to churn out Executioner novels monthly. This is a book series that you could buy a magazine-style subscription to. There's been over seven hundred Executioner novels, and eventually one of those poor souls handcuffed to the word processor ran out of ideas and threw some Lovecraft as a Hail Mary.
The hero of our book is special Agent Mallory Harmon. No, really, Mack is more of a confused spectator. She's a tough FBI agent who starts out gunning down swamp cultists in her undies before the feds send her on an adventure. With a sarcastic Miskatonic University professor at her side, the duo is ready to star in their own series of pulpy novels I would buy the hell out of. But Mack Bolan's on the cover, so he might as well come along.
There's an oil platform that's been turned into a sovereign nation of meth labs, and it must be shut down, Mack Bolan-style! Only problem is, the damn thing is surrounded by mind-controlled angry giant squids because it's built right where the cult of Cthulhu needs to do some rituals. So Mack and company must infiltrate the platform undercover and . . . get captured.
Seriously, Mack gets punked pretty easily, bound up, and nearly tortured. His escape takes up most of his scenes; there's staggering little he actually does here. I was stunned when I reached page 145 of an Executioner novel and Mack had only killed two people..
Meanwhile, Harmon and the professor run around, get shot at, use neuorolinguistic programming as a Jedi mind trick, and pick up a thinly veiled Hunter S. Thompson as a sidekick. Seriously, Mack Bolan could have called in sick; Harmon is the real protagonist, and she even gets the cool climatic fight scene that any action movie script would assign to the lead character. She makes the jokes and gets the one-liners. She has fun with it.
There's also a weird aside plot about Mack's private eye brother that reads like a 9-year-old Punisher fanatic tried to narrate the beginning of a Sam Spade novel. A gang member is force feed beer, people.
It's a very Executioner kind of writing style. This book describes guns like Tolkien describes trees and George R. R. Martin describes menus.
The best part about the book is the whale/squid war, though.
That . . . is some of the most original, imaginative science fiction world-building I've read all year. I was all in for the secret war between the squid and the whales the moment I read it. Sadly, we only get this perspective for about two full pages of text. Hell, reading this book was entirely worth it just to see this, and I wish it ended with an evil squid thing triple-teamed by Mack, Harmon, and a goddamned sperm whale just so I can see the good guys give a thumbs up to the whale as it swims off. Gerald Montgomery, write a damn book about the whale/squid war. It is your destiny.
So . . . how was the book?
Okay, let's make something clear. This is a men's adventure novel series in which a hard-jawed hero kills metric buttloads of people in ridiculous set pieces. That's fine. Seriously, that's totally fine. I read all of the Carson Napier of Venus series, and I'm currently reading Jewel of Tharn. I unabashedly love the Destroyer, and quote Chuin from the end of that movie constantly.
Yes, the genre can attract some really weird politics and racial portrayals, but I'm not dumping on this genre anymore than I'd dump on a Big Mac. Fine cuisine exists, but sometimes I want a damn Big Mac, and there is nothing wrong with loving this type of novel.
It's escapism, people, and C.S. Lewis was right when he said the only kind of people that have a problem with escaping are jailers.
Given that . . . this novel is awkward. It's crammed with good ideas that never connect. Let anyone who understands the following statement hear "The Executioner fights Cthulhu" and they'd expect more. There's good bits that never shake hands with each other, potential unfulfilled, and a few opportunities missed. This should be Mack Bolan's Delta Green adventure, but it isn't.
I really want to see Gerald Montgomery write the adventures of Agent Harmon and just throw gun porn and Lovecraft against each other.
Who knows? Maybe Montgomery wrote on a strict set of house guidelines. Maybe this is all he could get past his editors, and if so, I salute you, dear sir. I see what you wanted to do and, enjoyed it, and dearly wish you'd have done it a few more times. By book three in the Agent Harmon series, you'd have gold on your hands.
But I bet Mack Bolan rarely thinks about the one time he saw an honest-to-the-Outer-Gods Cthulhu idol. He's got work to do. As long as people are willing to vicariously live through a guy shooting whatever kinda people are in the headline news that day, the Executioner will has work to do.
And, hopefully, some day Agent Harmon will as well.
February 27, 2021
A glorious train wreck of diverse factions come together at an abandoned drilling rig in the Bermuda Triangle in one of the Executioner’s craziest adventures. The Mafia, the CIA, Meth manufacturers, a Lovecraftian cult that worships sea entities with bloody rituals face Mack Bolan and his team as he eradicates evil and dispenses justice on the furious waters of the Atlantic.
March 30, 2021
For several years around the turn of the millennium, I read a large number of Executioner novels and the associated books like Stony Man and Super Bolan and ended up getting rid of almost all of them when I moved. Leviathan was one of two that I kept and it is the only one whose individual plot I remembered. That’s because it was an absolutely awesome idea—Mack Bolan goes head-to-head against Cthulhu.
The plot actually holds together very well. On the one hand, there is the Cult of Cthulhu who thinks their time has come now that an avatar of that elder god has appeared in the oceans of the world. On the other hand, the CIA in its ongoing quest to separate itself from Congressional oversight by developing dark sources of funding has gone into business with the mob to manufacture drugs on an abandoned oil platform in the Atlantic Ocean. The CIA also sees this as an opportunity to rid itself of Mack Bolan who has been a serious thorn in their side. So they set a trap for Bolan and entice him and two covert government agents out to their platform where they turn on him and attempt to torture, interrogate and kill him. Unfortunately for them, Cthulhu is making its move at the same time.
This is a fascinating mixture of action adventure and horror with a U.S. submarine thrown in for good measure. If you like the Executioner or you like Cthulhu, you’ll want to read this book.
If you liked this review, you can find more at www.gilbertstack.com/reviews.
The plot actually holds together very well. On the one hand, there is the Cult of Cthulhu who thinks their time has come now that an avatar of that elder god has appeared in the oceans of the world. On the other hand, the CIA in its ongoing quest to separate itself from Congressional oversight by developing dark sources of funding has gone into business with the mob to manufacture drugs on an abandoned oil platform in the Atlantic Ocean. The CIA also sees this as an opportunity to rid itself of Mack Bolan who has been a serious thorn in their side. So they set a trap for Bolan and entice him and two covert government agents out to their platform where they turn on him and attempt to torture, interrogate and kill him. Unfortunately for them, Cthulhu is making its move at the same time.
This is a fascinating mixture of action adventure and horror with a U.S. submarine thrown in for good measure. If you like the Executioner or you like Cthulhu, you’ll want to read this book.
If you liked this review, you can find more at www.gilbertstack.com/reviews.
May 26, 2021
one of the worse cockamamee ideas of a story so far in the Executioner history. please get out of the SciFi crap I got too many books to go.
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews