Stephen Mertz

This review is written with a GPL 3.0 license and the rights contained therein shall supersede all TOS by any and all websites in regards to copying and sharing without proper authorization and permissions. Crossposted at Bookstooge.booklikes.blogspot. wordpress.leafmarks.com & Bookstooge's Reviews on the Road Facebook Group by Bookstooge's Exalted Permission. Title: The Iranian Hit Series: The Executioner Author: Stephen Mertz & Don Pendleton Rating: 3 of 5 Stars Genre: Action/Adventure Pages: 182 Format: digital scan Synopsis: Mack must guard an Iranian scumbag, merely because he is bait so Bolan can wipe out a particular hit group of Iranians that dare operate in the United States. My Thoughts: Bolan starts to deal with politics in his war. It isn't pretty and it makes him just another cog in a machine. Instead of being a lone warrior vigilante with a cold eye and even colder steel, he just becomes a tool of the government. He used to fight for the common man against an enemy who directly oppressed them. Now it is scaled up and it is for people in general. It is tough to articulate but it really comes across in this book. One more book I've got on my kindle then I'm done with this. I'll probably track down an Executioner book released in '16 just to see how it compares, but it can't be impossible for me to be any more apathetic about it then I have been about these post-Mafia books. "… (mais)

This was an interesting thriller that was so improbable as to make it seems virtually impossible, unlike many other thriller books out there. The book centers around the space shuttle Liberty. Its mission is aborted and it's forced to return and land, not in the US, but in North Korea. While the few survivors try to survive, the North Koreans, Chinese, and Americans are in a desperate race against time to find the shuttle and the survivors in order to avert a potential nuclear war.

Okay, now that that's out of the way, aside from how the shuttle is diverted, it's by whom that strikes me as absurd. I just can't buy it. I won't spoil it for possible readers by divulging it here, but it's really rather stupid, in my opinion. Then, there's the larger than life superhero of the novel, Trev Galt. He's actually an asshole who refuses to take orders from anyone, including the president of the United States, and is capable of leaping single buildings in a bound and taking on 400 men with one swing. Okay, I'm exaggerating, but the author really makes him out to be some kind of superhero, and that got old. Make him realistic, please. How about John Wells or Bob Lee Swagger? Trev Galt? Unbelievable moron.

This book had a lot of potential and it's still fairly decent. There's some good action in it. But the author makes some mistakes along the way that bring the book down a couple of stars. Cautiously recommended.… (mais)