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Mack Bolan the Executioner #102
Split Image
Mack Bolan is assigned to track down a vanished American pilot who was recently returned to the United States in exchange for three Bulgarian spies
- GenresFiction
224 pages, Paperback
First published May 1, 1987
1 person is currently reading
38 people want to read
About the author
Don Pendleton
1,540 books182 followersDon Pendleton was born in Little Rock, Arkansas, December 12, 1927 and died October 23, 1995 in Arizona.
He wrote mystery, action/adventure, science-fiction, crime fiction, suspense, short stories, nonfiction, and was a comic scriptwriter, poet, screenwriter, essayist, and metaphysical scholar. He published more than 125 books in his long career, and his books have been published in more than 25 foreign languages with close to two hundred million copies in print throughout the world.
After producing a number of science-fiction and mystery novels, Don launched in 1969 the phenomenal Mack Bolan: The Executioner, which quickly emerged as the original, definitive Action/Adventure series. His successful paperback books inspired a new particularly American literary genre during the early 1970's, and Don became known as "the father of action/adventure."
"Although The Executioner Series is far and away my most significant contribution to world literature, I still do not perceive myself as 'belonging' to any particular literary niche. I am simply a storyteller, an entertainer who hopes to enthrall with visions of the reader's own incipient greatness."
Don Pendleton's original Executioner Series are now in ebooks, published by Open Road Media. 37 of the original novels.
Wikipedia: Don Pendleton
He wrote mystery, action/adventure, science-fiction, crime fiction, suspense, short stories, nonfiction, and was a comic scriptwriter, poet, screenwriter, essayist, and metaphysical scholar. He published more than 125 books in his long career, and his books have been published in more than 25 foreign languages with close to two hundred million copies in print throughout the world.
After producing a number of science-fiction and mystery novels, Don launched in 1969 the phenomenal Mack Bolan: The Executioner, which quickly emerged as the original, definitive Action/Adventure series. His successful paperback books inspired a new particularly American literary genre during the early 1970's, and Don became known as "the father of action/adventure."
"Although The Executioner Series is far and away my most significant contribution to world literature, I still do not perceive myself as 'belonging' to any particular literary niche. I am simply a storyteller, an entertainer who hopes to enthrall with visions of the reader's own incipient greatness."
Don Pendleton's original Executioner Series are now in ebooks, published by Open Road Media. 37 of the original novels.
Wikipedia: Don Pendleton
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Displaying 1 of 1 review
April 3, 2025
3.5 stars
102 entries into the eponymous “Executioner” series and Mack “The Bastard” Bolan is still doing his thing, taking out bad guys left and right, giving no quarter, and being a total badass at it the whole way through.
In Split Image, Bolan takes a break from executing countless mafia goons and goes back to working for the government, trying to defend American freedom and root out a mole in the CIA who’s dead set on releasing an undercover KGB agent to wreck havoc. Plot wise, this one might not be up to snuff as other Executioner novels, as the story is a bit muddled and doesn’t read as straightforward as we are used to. While it works at times, it leads to one of the more confusing entries, especially around the half way point when a failed assassination attempt on the president is just randomly thrown into the mix, with little build up. There is an eventual explanation that does eventually make sense but it’s jarring and feels random.
Where Split Image excels, however, is its fast pace and tons of action. McDade’s work with Bolan is slowly getting better and is minutely pushing out Mike Newton’s work as the best consistent Executioner author, and that’s due to the way he manages to make the moments of explosions and gunfights feel fresh and exciting. There’s a car chase through the Louisiana swamps, the aforementioned assassination attempt, and a daring shootout in the New Mexico hills and all of them are tons of fun and creative. Also, unlike Newton’s more recent entires (once Gold Eagle decided to tack 70-80 extra pages into each one of these books), Split Image doesn’t feel needlessly wordy or padded with unnecessary details and dialogue.
Obviously this one doesn’t measure up to some of the more non stop stories (#’s 60-80) (and even the near perfect Save the Children…which has, up to this point, been the best of the expanded works), however, it’s a step back in the right direction and feels like a more contemporary entry in a series that constantly evolved with the times.
102 entries into the eponymous “Executioner” series and Mack “The Bastard” Bolan is still doing his thing, taking out bad guys left and right, giving no quarter, and being a total badass at it the whole way through.
In Split Image, Bolan takes a break from executing countless mafia goons and goes back to working for the government, trying to defend American freedom and root out a mole in the CIA who’s dead set on releasing an undercover KGB agent to wreck havoc. Plot wise, this one might not be up to snuff as other Executioner novels, as the story is a bit muddled and doesn’t read as straightforward as we are used to. While it works at times, it leads to one of the more confusing entries, especially around the half way point when a failed assassination attempt on the president is just randomly thrown into the mix, with little build up. There is an eventual explanation that does eventually make sense but it’s jarring and feels random.
Where Split Image excels, however, is its fast pace and tons of action. McDade’s work with Bolan is slowly getting better and is minutely pushing out Mike Newton’s work as the best consistent Executioner author, and that’s due to the way he manages to make the moments of explosions and gunfights feel fresh and exciting. There’s a car chase through the Louisiana swamps, the aforementioned assassination attempt, and a daring shootout in the New Mexico hills and all of them are tons of fun and creative. Also, unlike Newton’s more recent entires (once Gold Eagle decided to tack 70-80 extra pages into each one of these books), Split Image doesn’t feel needlessly wordy or padded with unnecessary details and dialogue.
Obviously this one doesn’t measure up to some of the more non stop stories (#’s 60-80) (and even the near perfect Save the Children…which has, up to this point, been the best of the expanded works), however, it’s a step back in the right direction and feels like a more contemporary entry in a series that constantly evolved with the times.
Displaying 1 of 1 review