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Super Bolan #5
Flight 741
Flight 741
Departs Munich for New York. It will never arrive.
Beneath the scorching Mideast sun, a nightmare begins to come true as Flight 741 sits like a silver coffin at Beirut International Airport.
U.S. foreign policy is on the line, and in the balance are the lives of more than four hundred passengers. One of them is special, very special. . .
Departs Munich for New York. It will never arrive.
Beneath the scorching Mideast sun, a nightmare begins to come true as Flight 741 sits like a silver coffin at Beirut International Airport.
U.S. foreign policy is on the line, and in the balance are the lives of more than four hundred passengers. One of them is special, very special. . .
352 pages, Mass Market Paperback
First published April 1, 1986
42 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 - 7 of 7 reviews
June 11, 2024
Written in 1986, at the height of fear over international terrorism and airplane hijacks, Flight 741, the 5th Super Bolan book, starts exactly as the cover suggests. The titular flight is taken over by gun toting terrorists and there’s nothing that can be done to stop them until the United States eventually capitulates. It’s tense and well written and Newton throws in some clever ideas that make this one a bit more unique than other Executioner and Mack Bolan books. Heck, Bolan himself doesn’t even really make an entrance by name until past the 100 page mark.
And that’s where Flight 741 quickly transitions into typical Executioner fare and the whole 110 page opening chapters seem to have little relation with the rest of the story. Bolan, who was in the plane afterall under an assumed alias, figures out who is responsible for the hijacking but it leads to a mildly confusing plot and cross over event that involves the KGB, body doubles, right wing militias, the inclusion of a ton of characters from the Able Team, Phoenix force, and Executioner books, and an eventual confrontation in the Swiss Alps. Good news is that Newton does manage to throw in enough action and some great callbacks to previous books to keep this fully readable and mostly enjoyable.
Still though, with such a weird plot shift, this really makes me think, as others have also suggested, that this book was never intentioned to be a Bolan book in the first place. The first few chapters are just so different from the rest of the story that it seems impossible it was originally planned as a Super Bolan. Instead it seems Gold Eagle or Pendleton approached Newton and told him his contractually obligated book was due and he managed to smash 2 ideas together.
Thankfully, it does work decently but had this been strictly a hijacking story set within the confines of an airplane (which I was really hoping it would be), this had potential to be one of the best Bolan-verse novels.
And that’s where Flight 741 quickly transitions into typical Executioner fare and the whole 110 page opening chapters seem to have little relation with the rest of the story. Bolan, who was in the plane afterall under an assumed alias, figures out who is responsible for the hijacking but it leads to a mildly confusing plot and cross over event that involves the KGB, body doubles, right wing militias, the inclusion of a ton of characters from the Able Team, Phoenix force, and Executioner books, and an eventual confrontation in the Swiss Alps. Good news is that Newton does manage to throw in enough action and some great callbacks to previous books to keep this fully readable and mostly enjoyable.
Still though, with such a weird plot shift, this really makes me think, as others have also suggested, that this book was never intentioned to be a Bolan book in the first place. The first few chapters are just so different from the rest of the story that it seems impossible it was originally planned as a Super Bolan. Instead it seems Gold Eagle or Pendleton approached Newton and told him his contractually obligated book was due and he managed to smash 2 ideas together.
Thankfully, it does work decently but had this been strictly a hijacking story set within the confines of an airplane (which I was really hoping it would be), this had potential to be one of the best Bolan-verse novels.
December 30, 2023
I assume this was an independently written novel that was adapted and possibly expanded into a Super Bolan. Bolan is undercover for the first half of the book and never referred to by name, even parenthetically to the reader, which is pretty unusual for a Bolan book, but the Super Bolan series was new, so maybe they were just trying things out and a little experimentation doesn't hurt anything. The second half of the book slips back into a more conventional Bolan mode.
Story-wise, it's just directly the Jackal hijacking, but that's not an event that I know much about, so I was pretty happy to be along for the ride.
Story-wise, it's just directly the Jackal hijacking, but that's not an event that I know much about, so I was pretty happy to be along for the ride.
June 3, 2018
I thought this was worth the read. Michael Newton does a good job with the Bolan books that he is written and is interesting. If you are a Bolan fan you will like it!
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January 13, 2020Boring and hard to understand
June 28, 2021
one great book
October 17, 2021
Bolan was humiliated & sought revenge on a brutal terrorist controlled by the KGB. He tracked him to Switzerland.
May 29, 2025
One of my favourite of the Bolan/Phoenix Force/Able Team books! This one has, in addition to Mack, Katz and McCarter from Phoenix Force and Carl Lyons from Able Team.
Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews