Where Mack Bolan Loses It a Little

Boston Blitz by Don Pendleton
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

These 70s books remind me of bloody, brutal 80s movies (which I liked, actually, to a point). The violence in both can be shocking, especially if you let yourself believe it could really be happening somewhere. However, as bloody as it is, and despite the main character's frequent, ambivalent musings about the ethical implications of his horrific crusade, the reader feels that he is justified in everything he does. It's a black and white world with good guys and bad guys, a world where he can ambush and murder people as long as they're bad guys, and everything is just fine. They deserve it. No harm done.

That's the logic of the books, anyway, and if you go along with it, at least as part of the general suspension of disbelief, it works fine. Very fun, in fact. It's like a grimdark fantasy except it's based in our real world...

(Here's my current theory: there's an alternate world similar to ours, one where guns and explosives aren't possible, maybe where the people have evolved beyond violence, but they still like their terrifying stories, and these novels--a kind of grimdark fantasy set in an incomprehensible society where such violence is possible--were written there to shock and entertain the good people. Then copies somehow were brought over into our universe.)

(I can't prove it. It just feels true.)

Anyway, remembering that different kinds of writing serve different purposes, and that the purpose of pulp fiction is definitely to tell a brisk, entertaining story, I have to give this 4/5 stars.

Not for all readers. But if they have movies in that alternate universe, this story would be a blockbuster.

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