Mountain Rampage by Don PendletonMy rating: 4 of 5 stars
I thought this was a better-than-average example of the genre.
The early Mack Bolan books are all about him taking on mafia families in various cities, getting revenge for his loved ones. Somewhere along the line, he pivoted to terrorists and the like. I haven't read enough or researched it to know when that happened, but this one (#54) is an example of the latter. The formula still works, IMO, and the book is an entertaining read.
The whole idea for the series is that there are criminals and evildoers who are so brutal, so dangerous and evil, that we can have no sympathy for them at all, so we can root for Bolan doing whatever he has to do to stop them. He's Rambo, John Wick, Doc Savage, and Ethan Hunt all wrapped into one. Here, his target is a bunch of eastern European (communist) terrorists who are preparing to poison whole cities, and they have been testing their chemicals on kidnapped people. He has to go into their Rocky Mountain compound all alone and stop them.
It's very satisfying in a kinda gladiatorial way when he kills the people we've seen commit horrendous crimes and then rescues some survivors. It's all very unlikely--one against 50--but the author actually does a reasonable job of imagining how it could be possible, provided the man is athletic, quick, and a very good shot. Resourceful, too. He cheats, though; he doesn't let them know he's coming.
These books are not for everybody, but I've liked them so far, and this one was one of the more satisfying ones of the books I've sampled. I'm a little surprised how much fun I find them, actually. It helps that they're move like novellas than novels. It's as if someone took a 100,000 page novel and removed everything but the action.
Nope. Not as if. That's exactly it. :)
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