Down Under Thunder

Phoenix Force #25

by Gar Wilson (Series Creator), Paul Glen Neuman (Contributor)

Three CIA agents infiltrate Australia's Nuclear Disarmament Party and promptly disappear.

The panic button is pushed when an American-made nuclear warhead is stolen. The bomb's kiloton payload is capable of destroying a whole city. A city the size of Sydney.

Phoenix Force is sent on a mission to find the missing Americans. What they discover is a group that dreams of a nuclear-free Australia - a dream that will be realized after the bomb is detonated!

218 pages, Mass Market Paperback

First published August 1, 1986

About the author

Phoenix Force is a series of action-adventure novels first published in 1982 by American Gold Eagle publishers. It is a spin-off of the Executioner series created by Don Pendleton.

Phoenix Force is one of two neutralization teams working for Stony Man, a top-secret anti-terrorist organization. As with The Executioner, the Phoenix Force novels have been written by a succession of authors under the pseudonym Gar Wilson. In 1991, Gold Eagle combined Phoenix Force with another Executioner spin-off series, Able Team, and launched the Stony Man book series, which is still being published as of 2005.

Reviews

[Josh Hitch · Rating 4 out of 5]

Closer to a 3.5, a solid adventure for the Force. Also, though the West German Hahn is a good replacement for the plucky Cuban, Encizo, it looks like Encizo will be back from injuries in the next installment. The story is about a group who wants a nuclear weapon free world in Australia and plan on detonating a small nuke to get people away from supporting leaders who were pro nuke. This group is headed up by a Rosenbergeresque (Rosenberger is the author of the Death Merchant books and is known for insane villians) villian who is really fat and eats constantly and talks incessantly about food. Overall the mission is fairly well done but with the head villian and his so called council being so comically portrayed it damper the whole thing for me.

I can recommend for fans of the mens adventure genre, its fast paced (even with the extra pages that they got in there by splitting the group and having 2 battles for the price of one) and entertaining. Again the villians do seem comically inept at times, though they are vicious enough and have a lot of members to throw at the Force.

[Holly Stone · Rating 3 out of 5]

The Force is a man short in this book because Rafael Encizo is out with an injury...so, Karl Hahn takes up the mantel as the team goes Down Under to Sydney Australia to find out why 3 C.I.A. operatives have disappeared and find and stop whatever is happening there if they can...With the full co operation of ASIO and a tour guide in the form of lovely Lila Blake whom Gary Manning has met before it isn't long before the intrepid team of 5 come up against some hard death dealing characters. Can they find and stop the problem before Australia goes nuclear??? read it and see

[Wayne · Rating 4 out of 5]

What starts out as sort of a tepid entry to the series soon kicks in to another gear and takes off. The premise is a bit convoluted. A group lead by a very fat man that eats almost all the time wants to explode a nuclear device in Australia so the world will ban nuclear weapons. Not the way I would do it, but O.K. The second half of this book is what gave it the higher rating.

[Sierra Rose · Rating 2 out of 5]

While the main villain in this one can only be considered lacking and boring, the book itself isn't a total loss. David's humor can always been seen and the prescence of a lady from Gary's past is interesting. Not as stellar as some.

[Little Timmy · Rating 3 out of 5]

A spin off series from his Executioner books. This series follows several secondary characters that band together. Recommended