Mack Bolan the Executioner #49 Doomsday Disciples

When multiple random murders begin popping up all around the United States and a senator’s daughter suddenly goes missing, it’s up to Mack Bolan and the Stony Man team to put two and two together and bring the reign of an insane death cult leader to an end. It’s not long before The Executioner finds himself in San Francisco, going toe to toe with a violent dictator set on bringing the American elite to their knees. If this sounds like yet another recycled plot from previous Executioner books, you’d be 100% correct (this is the 49th story after all), but somehow Michael Newton takes one of the thinnest plots of this entire series and makes it one of the best reads so far.

“Doomsday Disciples” is easily the most action packed and non-stop story to date. It’s 188 pages of pure adrenaline that never slows down. If you took the hard assed revenge moments of “Death Wish”, couple it with the extreme stylized violence of a “John Wick” film, and then throw in the relentless pacing of “The Gray Man” or “Extraction” you might get an idea of just how relentlessly awesome this particular installment of “The Executioner” is. For example, Bolan manages to get into not one, not two, but THREE separate car chases, each more frenetic and tense than before. He leads a bunch of evil dudes to a blind alley and blows them all to hell with pre-planted plastic explosives. He shatters skulls at pointblank range. He also employs some of the most brutal firepower we’ve seen yet, not limited to Uzis, M-16s, Walthers, and his own silver .44 Automag that he uses with brutal efficiency, mowing down dozens of baddies in gratuitous and glorious gore. No joke, the body count in “Doomsday Disciples” has gotta be in the stratosphere after Mack Bolan mops up.

I’m not being facetious when I say this is probably my favorite “Executioner” novel since “Terrorist Summit”. Even with its tired plot that borrows heavily from Pendleton’s original ideas (hell, even the setting in San Fran mirrors most of what happened way back in 1972’s “California Hit” and the main antagonist being just a replacement of some of the mafia “dons”) “Doomsday” kicks major ass. Like any over the top blockbuster or cheesy action flick, everything about this one delivers something awesome on every page and keeps the reader entertained from cover to cover.

An easy 5 star read.

©1983 Published by Golden Eagle

Review by J. Thomas Anderson

Instagram: @jdog_reads