Night of the Knives

Another excellent Chuck Rogers outing. One more the author provides us with great action, likeable side characters and a fluid, fast-paced story. My only gripe was the lack of villain development. We learn that the bad guys are nazis descended from WW2 soldiers who fled germany and wound up in Argentina. I felt this concept could have been explored much deeper. Thankfully, it's a minor gripe that doesn't hamper the overall experience very much. Definitely give this one a read, as it is jam packed with awesomeness.

I also found this title similar to Savage Game but no where as good maybe if I had read this one prior to the other my rating may be different. Again some very good characters introduced the two CIA guys stand out. Reading a title by this author you know you it will be action packed and this one delivers with some excellent scenes the APC stuff on the assault of the Bad Guys hard site excels as does the final assault again tense stuff. AGAIN when you read a title from this author you know that the Big Guy is going to cop it BIG time but I found it just over the top here. Sure he can withstand heaps and has done so many times but with this title I found myself constantly thinking what again? come on? another hand to hand contest when he can hardly walk? One of his offsiders has been shot in both legs and requires crutches to stand yet has no problems hopping onto a horse and riding it into the final assault ???? Yep good read AGAIN by this author but I am starting to get the hmm same old, same old, been there and done that with his titles would be nice to read some original stuff I reckon.

Bolan starts off with a mission to rescue a reporter. This dovetails into a mission to save a country (Argentina)from moderen day generation Nazis.I can't give this book enough praise for its action scences. The pluses 1.THe CIA agents are kick-@$$ guys with an atitude. 2.The bad guys look to me like Greek Gods with muscle and are hard to kill with one guy looking like Satan and one of the others looking like a witch doctor. 3. The bad guys wern't on StonyMan radar at all. 4. The president thinks about putting MACK BOLAN on lonewolf status. 5. Bolan and friends get beaten up horribly and ammo and weapons are in short supply while the Nazis hold all the cards. 6.There are 5 brothers. In the end Chuck Rogers has done a good job.

It is a Chuck Rogers novel. You know automatically several things. These would be:-a) It will have excellent action sequencesb) It will have a good storyc) Bolan will have the whosis kicked out of himd) The villains will be extreme meaniese) The story will flow very fastf) The odd character from Phoenix Force will make a guest appearenceThese are all good points and are characteristic of Chuck's novels. Night of the Knives has lots of excellent moments and villains, though the bad guys are no where near as good as those in the famous Savage Game. But it was a good story and I enjoyed it.There are of course the negative points, for me just two. The first is my usual moan about Chuck's novels. Yes, youvé guessed it, Time and Distance. Mr Rogers always seems to have a problem is stating how long something is between two points. Bolan is one moment in Africa, the next in Stony Man Farm, then back to Africa, then to Argentina (Bounos Aires) then to northen Argentina. How long was the adventure. We are told at one point that the US Embassy was attacked twice in one week only to be told a few pages later that both instances were last week. Bolan sometimes takes days to recover from his wounds, but how many fall along the wayside, and the villains are just waiting around for Bolan to show up. Always the same problem, Mr Rogers. Time and Distance.But there was the African side to the story and here I missed something. Maybe I was so excited by all the action that I missed a paragraph. Maybe I just blinked and missed it. Maybe an over-excited editor armed with a pair of sissors got carried away. Or maybe it just wasn't there to begin with. My problem is why was one of the top bad guys (Fredi) doing hanging around with a Nigerian criminal and handing out the ceremonial daggers (welcome to the Los Falcons Club) when the African "...didn't even show up on the Stony Man radar." I just didn't get it. Sorry Mr Rogers. Did I miss something? Other than serving as a springboard to the Argentinian side of the story I just couldn't figure out why the "master race" would recruit Africans into their organisation.But otherwise I enjoyed the story. It was a good one.

This was very similar to Savage Game. Although, I found this to be a bit better. Bolan comes up against some shadowy characters in Africa and follows the lead to South America. The Dudley character was very cool, along with his sidekick Kubrik. Although, in hindsight, they were both offshoots of Rogers' Burdick character. The action pieces in this were very well done. The APC battle was intense as was the finale, when Bolan was bruised, battered and bloody, going at it with the bad guys. Like some of Rogers' other books, a very vulnerable Bolan. Not usually the way I like to see the big guy, but this one clicked.

I really enjoyed this book. This was pretty good, with crisp, quick action. The only problem I saw with it was the pacing. Mr. Rogers doesn't quite have the pacing of other authors like Guenther or Wojtowicz. That lost two stars, but overall, a good read.