Chris Pon

Top-notch all-around, from the immediacy of the plot on through the settings, descriptions, characterizations and dialogue. Bolan logs a ton of frequent flyer miles taking on the bad guys from the West Coast all the way to North Korea with a few stops in between, and he resonates with the Mack we all know and love dating back to the Pendelton days. I liked the Jayne Bahn character, too, as she's a sassy, brassy gal who holds her own and has some good chemistry with Bolan without cutting into his feelngs for Barbara Price. The book seemed well-researched and thought out, with all the subplots eventually tying together while holding the reader's interest throughout. This is definitely one of the better entries in the series.

The cover sort of looks like Mack had a bad experience at a tanning salon between missions. Loved the book, though. Mack tracks down an Osama bin laden clone in Indonesia with the help of a sexy sidekick he apparently has worked with in the past. There are some gruesome bits and lots of action, suspense, a few cool plot twists, and a decent batch of characters on both sides of the law. At times there was almost too much going on but it all winds up fitting gotether and paying off. Oh, yeah, not to worry, that sexy sidekick is a woman called Jane Bahn (a play on James Bond maybe?). She's one tough, sassy cookie. I picture a buffed Sandra Bullock.

Great pacing and intrigue in this top-notch tale from Mertz. In lesser hands the whole Devil's Rain storyline would have seemed far-fetched, but the author weaves such a taut and compelling tale that you're carried along without asking too many questions. My only quibble was with Bolan's headgear on the cover, which looks so oversized you'd think he had Phoenix Force tucked away beneath it. Of course, Mertz had no say in that so you can't fault the book. This is a good one.

Here's a gem from the ancient days when Able Team routinely operated outside of the U.S. This book betrays the hit film 'Betrayal' by a good 16 years in terms of dealing with the insidiousness of drug-running out of Mexico. And Carl Lyons has rarely been better. Frost shows great handling in terms of letting action carry the day. A true page-turner that I read straight through on a recent plane trip, if you count the time I spent hanging out in the terminal to finish the last few chapters because I didn't want to put it down. A classic if you can find it at a used book store like I did.

A first-rate effort by Schmidt with an excellent combination of action, plot and character development, particularly with Daly, one of the better tragic figures in the Bolan canon. Vigiliante tales are common in this genre but rarely are they better presented than here. A great effort.

You have your Classic Coke and here you have your Classic Bolan... or at least it should have been. This closing chapter of Bolan's Mafia Wars begged for an action-packed page-turner, but here we get way too much tying up of loose ends at the expense of what Bolan does best. It seemed clear to me that Pendleton, like Willie Mays playing for the Mets, had stayed on the field longer than he should have and the creakiness shows. Yes, the two action scenes were top-notch, but they should have been the main course, not a side dish. You're better off reading earlier books in the series when Pendleton was on top of his game and there was a freshness to the mayhem.

Kasner did an okay job here, but like all the other 'attack on the Farm' books, I'm left wondering 'Why the hell do the neighbors put up with all this racket?'. I liked the action away from the farm in Colombia, though, and give Kasner an 'A' for coming up with a decent new twist on an otherwise uncredible -- and all too frequent -- storyline.