Point of Impact

A typical Schmidt adventure with ex military gone bad groups, this time in league with an Islamic terrorist faction. The bad guys are the standard you can expect in any of his novels. The body count is surprisingly lower than expected, the plot nothing special, the action scenes done well but not much you haven't seen before. There is the big stakes with the chaos in the city that adds a tension to the story that worked decently. A lot of editorial gaffs in this one, making me wonder if a proofreader was absent. Overall an ok action yarn, but not among the better novels in the series.

This being a pre-9/11 book, it was ultimately chilling when the terrorists started their terror attacks in Washington D.C. That was probably the best part of the book. Schmidt is the king of carnage, and this book was no exception. This wasn't the most action packed novel, and the finale wasn't as blazing as other Schmidt books I've read. Just an average adventure.

Well this title did little for me. The start was good with a group of special force soldiers who have been missing in a action or presumed killed in action for 30 years since Vietnam are actually alive and well and have been planning this for that amount of time. They take over a building and are holding 700 plus civilians as hostages. The building is wired with explosives and the roof is set up with defences making it impossible to infiltrate the building. The ransom is a trifling sum of one billion dollars. Add into the equation 3 back pack nukes and the ebola virus and this group has some serious bargaining power no doubt. This could have set up the title to be a good read with this plot alone. So WHY would you recruit a group of terrorists and stage twenty odd terrorist attacks prior to the capture of the building. These attacks result in the deaths of civilians numbering in the low thousands (whatever that means I'm guessing 2 - 4 thousand maybe). Maybe you want to show you are serious and this seemed a good idea at the time I guess. So you have three back pack nukes in your possession which would have been obtained at a substantial cost. The first chapter describes how one of these is placed under a bridge below the water level. What about the other two? Now firstly recall this has been in the planning stages for thirty years. So where are the other two? In my mates garage as we didn't get around to placing them aparantly. Now you would presume the commanding officer of this bunch of lunatics is a pretty cold hearted sort of fellow as he has just caused the deaths of "the low thousands" of civilians. But no when Mack suggests on the first part payment of the ransom he should release all of the kids from the hostages to show he is really a good guy. AND he does (huh). Later after another part payment Mack suggests he pull up stakes, let all of the hostages go and fly off to another location and he will bring the rest of the money to them a bit later on. AND he does (huh). Apart from the above mentioned minor annoyances this is a fairly good read hence the five stars BUT it could have been SO MUCH better.

This book was for most part great and exciting one building up the pace to the climatic end and it was hard to let the book down each time as it had that special edge and suspense a lot of books are lacking these days. Yet there are a few "minor" negative things about the book but from my point of view there should have been a bit more put into the past of Becker and the platoon of thugs and with some deeper characterization the book would have been an even better one. However with the length of the book and how it was build up in mind it would have been impossible to add these elements to the story so I kind of feel that this should have been a Super Bolan with added touch of characterization and more insight into the terrorist and the reason why they turned of the path of evil and greed. I really liked the cat and mouse game between Bolan and Becker and how Bolan managed to trap the over-confident Becker into releasing part of his grip on the hostage situation. Still that was strange as Becker had everything worked out to the last possible detail and how in fact Bolan didn´t have to put too much effort into outsmarting Becker in the end. To add some more negative issues..........there were some question burning in my mind at the end of the book, questions like; What really made them into the evil persons? Who was the backing man of the operation? The shadow person finiacing the whole operation? What was CIA´s possible involvement in the plot? Oh well, sometime one needs to go through life without getting answers to every question on one´s mind. Still though..........read this one and you should have a good time!!! (Iceland - 2005)

Not the best...not the worst. Just another book in the series to tide the fans over until the next installment. Am I the only one who is getting a little bored with the series at times because of books like this one?

It takes a lot for me not to like a Bolan book, but this one is in my least favorite list. First off the number of casualties is to high for Bolan, maybe if this was continued into the rest of the series and not forgotten by next month's book. Secondly the bad guy got off way to easy. This is onetime wee he should have been brought back to face justice-see point #1. Third-the last backpack nuke was foiled by mother nature. This could have made a great/okay superbolan, but ends up a very rushed executioner. The implications of the heinous acts of terrorism is too soon forgotten and everything is back to statis quo like nothing happened. Skip this and watch Die Hard 3 instead!

An excellent effort from Schmidt. Having lived here in the Washington, DC area for 10 years now I can truth fully say that Schmidt has now scared the s**t out of me. When I was driving on the beltway yesterday I kept looking at people expecting a car bomb, and of course I will never look at the Air & Space Museum the same way again. I have to give kudos to Schmidt for his research of the DC area, the Metro and roads mentioned were all right on. I liked Bolan in this one in that he had to wait until he could finally get Becker and his men where he wanted them, he couldn't go all out in a classic Bolan Blitz, he had to bide his time and outsmart Becker.

This book had lots of action. I read in two days. I really liked the Action when the terrroits took over the National Air and Space Museum. Good Job Mack!!!!!

Something told me not to trash this Dan Schmidt novel before reading it, and I'm glad that little something did speak to me. There was some bad:1) Just how many renegade, bitter, murderous Vietnam veterans are there in America? Schmidt must have killed at least 300 in his books.2) Next to no original characterization for the cardboard cut-out Palestinians.3) OSWALD! Deidrich Bader had to have been an influence on the guy on the cover. I hope the new covers don't kick in until we get Lewis, Drew and Kate. I do think Mimi was on the cover of Rolling Thunder however.The good?A dead-rock solid situation for the Executioner to be pushed to his limits. An entire city wrecked (in a much more satisfying manner than in the Hydra Trilogy's start). A tense hostage stand-off at the Aviation museum. And a satisfying end to the bad guys with a variety of intelligent points. I love how the last nuke is discovered... something truly original and yet entirely plausible, something truly fresh and unexpected from Schmidt. Bolan's taking down of the terrorists was fantastic... and not one high-powered aircraft in sight, except for the bad guys. Heck, Bolan's interrogation of the Palestinians was worth the price of admission itself. When Dan gives up his formula, he damn well rocks.