Executioner 101 Eternal Triangle

Mack Bolan the Executioner #101

by Michael Newton

Frank Lawrence, a Vietnam veteran and now a police officer, is determined to avenge his father's death at the hands of Mack Bolan

Genres: Fiction

Paperback

First published April 1, 1987

About the author

Librarian Note: There is more than one author by this name in the Goodreads database.

From Wikipedia:
"Michael Newton (born 1951) is an American author best known for his work on Don Pendleton's Mack Bolan series. Newton first began work on the Executioner series by co-writing "The Executioner's War Book" with Don Pendleton in 1977. Since then he has been a steady writer for the series with almost 90 entries to his credit, which triples the amount written by creator Don Pendleton. His skills and knowledge of the series have allowed him to be picked by the publishers to write the milestone novels such as #100, #200, and #300.

Writing under the pseudonym Lyle Brandt, Michael Newton has also become a popular writer of Western novels. He has written a number of successful non-fiction titles as well, including a book on genre writing (How to Write Action Adventure Novels). His book Invisible Empire: The Ku Klux Klan in Florida won the Florida Historical Society's 2002 Rembert Patrick Award for Best Book in Florida History. Newton's "Encyclopedia of Cryptozoology" won the American Library Association's award for Outstanding Reference Work in 2006."

Pen names: Lyle Brandt, Don Pendleton, Jack Buchanan

Bibiliography available here.

Reviews

[Jordan Anderson · Rating 3 out of 5]

2.5 stars

This one has its moments, but overall, it falls short of delivering a truly gripping experience. The book tries to balance action, intrigue, and emotional stakes, but the execution (no pun intended) feels uneven.


In all honesty, “The Eternal Triangle” should have held the spot of Executioner 100 as it stands as a kind of crossover/culminating event of the series. Bolan returns back to Pittsfield, the site of his very first attack against the mafia was back in 1969, and with it, a few characters from the past make their appearance. The plot starts off promising, with Mack Bolan caught in a deadly three-way standoff between the Mafia, the cops, and a violent vigilante who’s attempting to frame Bolan, but the pacing stumbles in the middle. Some action scenes are thrilling, but others drag with excessive description and predictable outcomes. The characters, while serviceable, lack depth—especially the antagonists, who feel more like caricatures than real threats.

The greatest issue here is that this one is clearly padded with unnecessary descriptions and dialogue in an attempt to make it hit the 250 page requirement all the newer Executioner books switched over to around book 92 or 93. Sometimes this works, like it did with “Save the Children” and “Death Has a Name” which were cover to cover thrill rides, but here, it’s obvious Newton didn’t have much to work with and he was really stretching things out. So instead of action packed pages flying by at an insane pace, it’s more of struggle of pointless descriptions and lengthy pages where not much happens.

There are flashes of the classic Executioner grit and tension, but the book never quite reaches its full potential or really demonstrates the greatness of most of the Executioner novels. Worse, most of what happens never feel necessary to Bolan’s “War Everlasting” and, unless you’re a completist, this one is easy to skip over.

[Erich Jacoby-hawkins · Rating 5 out of 5]

Mike Newton creates an opportunity to revisit Pendleton's debut Bolan book with a tale about a young man who has grown up hating Mack for executing his mobster father in his very first anti-Mob hit and now starts to pull strings to bring the Executioner "back home". Mack knows something is up but it takes most of the book for him to get it all figured out, and the fact that someone is hunting him from the shadows, someone who knows a lot (but not everything) about his habits, means he's in serious peril and not able to do the recon and preparation that provide much of his strength.

This story presents a refreshing shift from what can otherwise be a fairly formulaic series, but does it without changing how the star character thinks and acts - it just gives him a somewhat different situation to respond to. The return to the scene of his first anti-Mafia adventure, and the update on some of the characters he first met then, moving one of them up to a main supporting character, makes this an excellent addition to the series, especially for those who have read the debut novel.

And the title is a clever pun - the "triangle" isn't a three-way situation, but rather references the location of the Executioner's first Mafia kill.

[Nathan Bichler · Rating 4 out of 5]

A little wordy, but a great recap of Bolan's adventure from his first adventure to book 101 and all the challenges he had to overcome to become legend