The Lightning Stones by Jack Du Brul

It has been a while since I read a Jack Du Brul novel, and, after reading The Lightning Stones, I am trying to figure out what I have been thinking all these years.  Du Brul writes excellent adventures, as this one was full of action from start to finish.  The Lightning Stones is a globe-spanning rollicking escapade with protagonist Phillip Mercer taking the reader from the mines of Minnesota to suburban Washington, D.C., to the mountains of Afghanistan, back to the U.S., and off to the vast Pacific Ocean.  All this globetrotting is framed by the "true" story of what happened on Amelia Earhart's ill-fated attempt to circumnavigate the earth by airplane in 1937.  Du Brul connects Earhart's 1937 flight to the present day very well, and his use of the global-warming "conspiracy" in doing so is inspired plotting.  What a great story!

The story's hero, Phillip Mercer, makes the story even better.  After reading Du Brul's earlier Mercer stories (it has been several years since the last one), I thought that Mercer was an under-appreciated literary action hero.  Dirk Pitt, Jack Ryan, and Jack Reacher get a lot more publicity and acclaim, but Mercer is just as heroic, just as dashing, and just as ingenious as those other guys.  He is intelligent, daring, and has a keen sense of justice.  His job as a geologist allows Du Brul to place Mercer in situations that other heroes could not be in.  This story could not happen to Jack Ryan or Reacher, as neither has the scientific acumen to pull off the research and scientific aspects of this story.  He is certainly a 21st century action hero.

With a great plot and a great hero, Jack Du Brul has hit a home run with The Lightning Stones.  Go check it out soon!

Review of War Against the Mafia by Don Pendleton

I first heard of Mack Bolan, the Executioner, about 15 years ago. For some reason, despite the fact that the series sounded interesting, I finally got around to reading my first Executioner story when I saw that the stories were being re-released as e-books. Boy am I sorry I waited so long to read this series!

Maybe this wasn't the first action novel ever written, but it's a damn good one. Mack Bolan didn't want to be a vigilante warring with the Mafia, but he seemingly had no choice after he discovered the Mafia is responsible for the deaths of most of his family. And despite being only one man, he fights quite the war against the Mafia.

Mack Bolan enters this first story already known as the Executioner from his decorated military career in Vietnam, where he was a expert sniper during two tours of duty. He returns to the U.S. to bury his parents and sister after his father, driven to madness by the Mafia, kills the two women and then himself. Bolan is given leave from the military to care for his now-orphaned younger brother. Instead of simply taking a job as an Army recruiter and raising his brother, the Executioner decided to raise hell with the Mafia. That's where the action starts.

Bolan starts by showing off his sniper skills by killing several Mafia members from long range. Then he infiltrates the Mafia by getting a job with the same mobsters that he is trying to eliminate. From the inside, Bolan continues his one-man war. I didn't keep track, but he must've killed about 50 mob men throughout this story.

This is a great beginning to a series that now has some 600+ entries. Of course, the war against the Mafia isn't over by the end of the book, but it's clear that the Executioner is going to continue fighting until he wins the war. And I'm going to be sure to follow his wartime exploits in future volumes. You should too!