Island Deathtrap (Executioner/Mack Bolan #56)

This book, like all Executioner novels after #38 ("Satan's Sabbath") was not written by Don Pendleton. If you check the "special thanks" on the copyright page, whoever is credited there is the true author. For marketing purposes, Don Pendleton's name remains on the front cover, like Tom Clancy, R.L Stine or many other famous authors who can't keep up with the pace of new novels demanded by their publishers. That's where the "ghost writer" comes in. Island Deathtrap is written by E. Richard Churchill, who also wrote #54: Mountain Rampage. Here, Churchill does an excellent job and is a master of the descriptive phrase making this book a pleasure to read. Unfortunately, the author only contributed these two books to the series. Mack Bolan, The Executioner, is dispatched by his boss at Stony Man to investigate mysterious goings-on in rural, coastal Maine. There, he discovers his local contact has been murdered and the villagers are being terrorized into submission by a ruthless gang of brutal thugs. The bad guys are holed up on an island fortress. They are smuggling weapons and foreign terrorists into the U.S., but why? Unfortunately, the author never explains why, leaving it up to the reader's imagination. The primary objective is to stop the smugglers and that's exactly what the Executioner does, in one bloody skirmish after another, culminating in a fiery climax. Although there is a bit of investigation dominating the first half, Island Deathtrap is action-packed and satisfying. What I liked about it versus other books in the series was that the scale of the conflict was much smaller, so you got a good idea of its impact on regular people who you saw throughout the book: some helping, some hindering. The insular, suspicious nature of the victimized locals adds to the fun as Bolan tries to prove his good intentions. There is also a surprisingly gratuitous, gory end to one of the villains that it impossible to forget! Island Deathtrap was the first Executioner book I ever read (got it as a 13th birthday present from my two best friends); as such, it will always hold a special place in my heart. I loved it at 13, and having just reread it for the first time since 1983, it still holds up well now that I'm 35. My only complaints (interestingly, the same ones I had at 13) are the villains are rather flat and (as I mentioned before) their motives remain unclear. It is Churchill's mastery of describing everything else that ultimately mitigates, if not overcomes these flaws.