Death Squad by Don Pendleton

First published in 1969; published digitally by Open Road Media on October 11, 2016

Death Squad is the second novel in the Executioner series. Mack Bolan, having started his war against the mafia in War Against the Mafia, takes his show on the road. About three pages in, Bolan has arrived in LA, admired several women in bikinis, and killed three guys in a shootout. A couple pages later, three more are dead in a second shootout as Bolan gets an assist from his Vietnam buddy Zitka.

At that point, I stopped counting the bodies.

There’s a six-figure price on Bolan’s head (in 1969 dollars) so every thug with a gun wants a piece of him. Bolan decides if he’s going to fight a war, he needs an army. A small army, a band of ten brothers, all Vietnam veterans. Bolan recruits a demolition expert, a scout, a couple of snipers, a weapons expert, a “mass-death” expert (he’s good with artillery), an electronics expert, and other veterans who believed that “manhood’s highest expression” involved “a big gun and a twenty-power scope.” They are happy to join Bolan’s death squad since civilian life lacks excitement and the promise of easy money beckons.

Death Squad is the novel in which Bolan forms a relationship with LAPD Detective Carl Lyons, one of the cops who is charged with stopping his rampage. Lyons doesn’t like what Dolan is doing to his city, but respects Bolan’s code. Mafia killers are fair game, but civilians and cops are never Bolan’s targets. Lyons eventually becomes a key part of the series.

Death Squad gives the impression that Bolan will never again work as part of a team, although that changes later in the series (and in spin-offs). There isn’t much substance in Death Squad, but there are lots of explosions and gun battles and chase scenes. The pace is relentless. Unlike many modern thriller writers, Pendleton doesn’t waste words describing his favorite gun in loving detail. Nor does Pendleton waste words on the political rants that mar so many modern thrillers. Pendleton doesn’t waste words on anything.

Pendleton was developing a formula in the early Executioner books but Death Squad is too early in the series for it to seem formulaic. If you like violent novels about men with a mission taking on bad guys against impossible odds (and really, who doesn’t?), it’s hard to beat the early Executioner novel’s. They are among the classics of the genre.

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