Well let me say from the start this is pretty ordinary for an Executioner book.
Perhaps after just having read Mel Odom's brilliant Moon Shadow trilogy and been blown away, this title happens to be the next title in the series before the big one #300 I had a critical read looking for some of the same?
No definately not.
The Mack Bolan I know is the supreme warrior who will take on any situation no matter the odds and protect the innocent at all costs. He goes out of his way to protect noncombat allies and always prefers to do it himself than rely on others.
Well not according to this author Mack not only asks for help from his allies who are not combat trained he then goes on to give them a 20 minute runover of the weapons they are going to use and these people are then transformed into crack soldiers intimately aware of their weapons abilities and are now crackshots even though they have never fired the weapon/any weapon before.
One section describes how the boss of one of the groups and one of his gunners (count that two right) have escaped into a sewer tunnel after a firefight against Mack and his female ally.
Mack realizing his female ally is in a state of shock (I wonder why) slaps her back to reality.
WHY ???
Because he need BACKUP when he goes after these two clowns who are not even adept enough to shoot straight and he is desperate for her help.
HUH EXCUSE ME ??
The plot is ordinary and the characters introduced come over as plastic. The action scenes were okay at times and I thought the author was trying hard but it left me cold I'm afraid.
Not a title I would recommend to read in this series.
The major problem I had with Dangerous Encounter is that Bolan is,literally, cardboard and is barley developed. The same goes for the villains who barley appear in the novel and we learn little about them. The best characterizations in this novel is for Bolan's three allies but that's it.
The action was average, the plot was thin and the ending left plot holes such as what happened to King's sister and such.
The author set the story in Soho but I couldn't "paint" a picture in my mind of the locations as he barley mentioned what the area looked like.
Overall, this author has potential but still has a long way to go.
Scarcely a executioner novel. Minor charcters seems to be more well rounded than Mack. Great us of London. Villains seemed to low level uninteresting scum. All most non actions. Story was well written but main character could have been any body (Nick Cartet, Malko Linge or who ever). I just did not get Executioner feeling from this book.
Bolan is in London, where the entire story takes place, and while on some minor mission for Brognola, Mack finds himself distracted by some violence at the airport, and finds himself getting involved in another mission of his own. It was refreshing to have Bolan take on a personal mission, which was one of the positives of this book. I liked the allies Bolan had, they seemed to be regular people, not super commandos, they just wanted to fight for the innocent, and Bolan taught them the use of firearms and tactics. The Stamp character was one tough sob. It's a shame though that they didn't find the girls they were looking for, that loose end was hanging at the end of the book.
On the whole however, this novel was a little too average, a thin plot, and there was no perspective from the bad guys at all, no getting into their heads, or details on what their scemes were. But the biggest problem I had with this book was the poor writing. Many of the action scenes were rather clumsy and awkward, and in particular, the writing was bad in the opening two chapters. It just seemed juvenile to me. But the writing did seem to improve as the story went on. This book is an average story at best, but considering the lame writing in parts of the novel, I'm shaving two stars off the rating. The author has potential, and maybe if he wrote another Executioner, the writing would hopefully improve.
Passable material if you plan on reading all the books in the series coming out, but if you're choosy, you might want to skip this one.
