Death Squad (The Executioner #2) (1969)

by Don Pendleton

Mack Bolan heads to California with a Mafia contract on his head, where he recruits a small “death squad” to hit the Los Angeles family as both police and mob killers close in on him.

 This second installment of Don Pendleton’s seminal men’s adventure series shifts away from lone 70s revenge thriller toward more of a Dirty Dozen vibe. 

Don Pendleton

There are entertaining stretches from the Mafia’s point of view in which they get increasingly frazzled and short-tempered as the siege tightens. 

The frantic efforts of the police to respond to a threat they can’t quite locate, always a step behind, gives a cat-and-mouse feel to the action. 

Unfortunately, the new team never fully comes alive. 

They are less like characters than a set of interchangeable “skills,” and I had trouble keeping straight who was who; functionally, they operate as a single partner to Bolan rather than distinct presences with their own personalities. 

"Death Wand" (Greek)

Still, I enjoyed this one quite a bit. 

"Massacre in Beverly Hills" (French)

There are lots of action scenes, and the book builds to an explosive ending that is exciting and unexpectedly poignant in a manly-not-sappy-at-all he-man kind of way. 

The final assault that wipes out most of Bolan’s crew reframes the whole experiment as a warning and a prophecy. 

I haven’t read any further in the series yet, but this finale suggests that Bolan is doomed to fight a lonely war and to live with the knowledge that making an ally is potentially handing them a death sentence. 

I’ll see if this is borne out in future books of the series. 

I know that farther down the line during the Gold Eagle days Bolan will gather a team around himself, but that’s a topic for another day.