Island Deathtrap (Executioner/Mack Bolan #56) [Paperback]

Don Pendleton (Author)

Product Details

• Paperback: 190 pages
• Publisher: Gold Eagle (July 1, 1983)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0373610564
• ISBN-13: 978-0373610563
• Product Dimensions: 6.7 x 4.1 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 5.6 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,608,250 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Don Pendleton (1927-1995) was born in Little Rock, Arkansas. At the age of fourteen, during World War II, he enlisted in the Navy, serving until 1947 as a Radioman. He returned to active Naval duty during the Korean Conflict. Following the war he worked as a railroad telegrapher, CAA/FAA air traffic control specialist, and aerospace engineer. In the latter career, he worked as a senior engineer for Martin-Marietta's Titan ICBM programs and as an engineering administrator in NASA's Apollo Moonshot program. He published his first short story in 1957 and his first novel in 1961. Leaving his aerospace career behind, Don turned to full time writing in 1967, produced a number of mystery, science fiction and futuristic novels, a screenplay, and numerous poems, short stories and essays.

In 1969, War Against the Mafia, featuring Mack Bolan, the Executioner, was published. The phenomenal success of the first novel led to thirty-seven sequels over the next twelve years. Dozens of imitators, inspired by Pendleton's success, arose during the 1970's to constitute a new particularly American literary genre and the term Action/Adventure coined by Pendleton himself, has since spread to encompass television and motion picture formats as well. The original thirty-eight Executioner novels have been translated in more than twenty-five languages with in-print figures of more than 200 million copies worldwide. Pendleton franchised "Don Pendleton's Mack Bolan" to Harlequin's Gold Eagle Books in 1980, and more than 600 books based on the Executioner and spin-offs--Phoenix Force, Able Team, Stony Man, Mack Bolan, Super Bolan, have been published under their continuing program.

Don's more recent works include a series of six mystery novels based the exploits of Joe Copp, Private Eye, and another six mystery novels based on the character, Ashton Ford, Psychic Detective.

Don turned to nonfiction in 1990 and, with his wife, Linda, produced To Dance With Angels, a definitive study of life after death and spirit communication. Published in hardcover by Kensington, it is now in its fourth edition. They also co-wrote Whispers From the Soul. Don's last novel was Roulette co-written with Linda Pendleton.

Together, Don and Linda, adapted and scripted The Executioner, War Against the Mafia, to Comic graphic novel format, which was published in 1993. Following Don's death, Linda adapted and scripted the second Executioner novel, Death Squad, published in 1996 by Vivid Comics.

His last nonfiction books are A Search for Meaning From the Surface of a Small Planet, and The Metaphysics of the Novel and a Novelist by Don Pendleton with Linda Pendleton, a book for aspiring writers.

Don was a long time member of the Authors Guild; Authors League of America; Writer's Guild of America, West; Past West Coast Director of Mystery Writers of America; International Platform Association; and a frequent speaker on campus and writers' symposiums.

Don Pendleton published more than 125 books in his career. For biographical reference and bibliography on Don Pendleton, see:

Twentieth Century Crime and Mystery Writers, (St. Martin Press); Contemporary Authors (Gale); Queen's Edition, Dictionary of International Biography (Melrose - London, England); Murder Ink (Workman); Who's Who in the Midwest.

Photo of Don Pendleton by Linda Pendleton.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5.0 out of 5 stars A solid, action-packed entry in the Executioner series, May 14, 2006

By 

Baron Von Cool - See all my reviews

This review is from: Island Deathtrap (Executioner/Mack Bolan #56) (Paperback)

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.