Where Bolan Hunts for Treasure

Ambush on Blood River by Don Pendleton
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

(4 stars ranked on the pulp fiction scale, that is.)

This is a pretty good Mack Bolan novel. I liked his fights against the mafia more than his later books, fighting against terrorists and assorted bad guys, for reasons I'm still musing on. But this is pretty good, too. I was leaning toward a lower score, but the last two chapters jumped up, with a final act that wouldn't be out of place in a decent action movie.

A man convinces Bolan that sensitive papers, originally stored in a safe deposit box, were accidentally stolen along with a lot of treasure, then hidden and abandoned for years somewhere in the Congo. They needed to be located and removed, with the stolen gold and silver as well, before a local warlord found it. The papers contained some US secrets that could be damaging if exposed, making the matter significant enough that Bolan would take it on.

Though it's quickly-written pulp fiction, the kind that demands lots of action and not a ton of research, the author (journalist Alan Bomack, writing under the collective pseudonym of Don Pendleton) demonstrates a decent command of the facts regarding the history and status of countries in that part of Africa in the 1980s, especially the intervention of the US and other countries in government and business, as well as providing a convincing description of settings and local conditions. This type of novel doesn't usually demand much verisimilitude beyond the proper description of guns and explosives; it seems like his pride demanded a little more.

It's still an action novel, meant just to entertain with a fast-paced plot, and though it lags a bit in the middle I think it works well overall. And at about 60K words, it doesn't overstay its welcome. I feel like the modern publishing universe could use a lot more books in the 160-200 page range, which seemed much more common in the 70s and 80s. It takes a lot of energy to commit to 800-page books. :)

This is a somewhat better than average example of the genre. Recommended for readers who are looking for that.

View all my reviews