The Invisible Assassins

Mack Bolan the Executioner #53

by Don Pendleton (Series Creator), Alan Bomack (Contributor)

An American computer expert was cut down on a dark street in front of Mack Bolans eyes.

Within hours The Executioner was on his way to Japan, where he faced fanatical hatreds that were keener than a swordblade. Alone in an alien land, he waged fierce war to prevent the most hideous secret of World War II from triggering the final act of madness.

The odds were against survival with Bolan trapped between the Yakuza, the mt powerful gangster organiation in the world, and a secret army of ninja warriors. But The Executioner would soon make those odds almost even. . . .

Genres: Fiction, Action

182 pages, Paperback

First published April 1, 1983

About the author

Don Pendleton was born in Little Rock, Arkansas, December 12, 1927 and died October 23, 1995 in Arizona.

He wrote mystery, action/adventure, science-fiction, crime fiction, suspense, short stories, nonfiction, and was a comic scriptwriter, poet, screenwriter, essayist, and metaphysical scholar. He published more than 125 books in his long career, and his books have been published in more than 25 foreign languages with close to two hundred million copies in print throughout the world.

After producing a number of science-fiction and mystery novels, Don launched in 1969 the phenomenal Mack Bolan: The Executioner, which quickly emerged as the original, definitive Action/Adventure series. His successful paperback books inspired a new particularly American literary genre during the early 1970's, and Don became known as "the father of action/adventure."

"Although The Executioner Series is far and away my most significant contribution to world literature, I still do not perceive myself as 'belonging' to any particular literary niche. I am simply a storyteller, an entertainer who hopes to enthrall with visions of the reader's own incipient greatness."

Don Pendleton's original Executioner Series are now in ebooks, published by Open Road Media. 37 of the original novels.

Wikipedia: Don Pendleton

Reviews

[Shadow · Rating 3 out of 5]

 

As I said in a previous review, Mack Bolan vs. ninjas is a matchup I can't resist, so when I learned that Mack has tangled with the legendary shadow warriors on several other occasions I decided to track them down. The Executioner #53: The Invisible Assassins was Bolan's first run-in with ninjas, published in 1983 just as the "ninja boom" was exploding.

The first thing I noticed about the book is the striking cover art by iconic Bolan artist Gil Cohen—click here for the full painting. Take a moment to savor the scene: Bolan in his trademark "blacksuit", with throwing stars on his belt, his silenced .44 Auto Mag raised to blow someone away, in an elegant Japanese bathhouse with a dead ninja sprawled by the pool in the background. If that doesn't make you want to read this book, you obviously aren't my kind of shadow warrior!

The story opens with Bolan witnessing the murder of a Japanese-American computer wizard named Shinoda on the streets of L.A. during some kind of transaction. The killing is carried out almost instantaneously, by a shadowy figure who leaves the body without a mark on it and disappears into the night. When Bolan's partner is then run over and killed by a cold-eyed Asian driver, Bolan vows to bring this "invisible assassin" to justice. Bolan is soon assaulted by the same figure and barely survives—shaken by the assailant's ability to get to him without triggering his near-infallible danger instincts. But the attack does trigger Bolan's eidetic memory, and he recognizes the attacker as Zeko Tanaga, a notorious Red Army Faction terrorist who was thought to have been killed in a terrorist training camp in Yemen. Clearly Shinoda was involved in something very big and bad if he was meeting with Tanaga, and Bolan needs to find out what it was.

Bolan follows his only leads to Tokyo, hoping to identify some faces in photos found in Shinoda's apartment and track down Tanaga. Posing as an American security consultant, he is soon attacked by thugs with shortened little fingers—yakuza. Soon after that, Bolan notices a blonde woman following two of the yakuza goons on the streets, whom he promptly saves by smashing the gangsters' faces. The blonde turns out to be a graduate student named Sandra who is researching the secret power structures of Japan that led to their involvement in World War II. She has uncovered evidence of a conspiracy of the "Eight Jonin"—a cabal of eight powerful warlords who have run Japan from the shadows for centuries and lead a fanatical organization called the "Circle of the Red Sun."

Bolan's own research suggests that Shinoda was involved in the development of a revolutionary bio-computing technology, which is somehow connected to notorious war-time Japanese biowarfare research and the Eight Jonin. All signs point to Red Sun Chemicals corporation, which owns a castle overlooking the sea, as the nexus of the conspiracy that killed Shinoda and involves Tanaga, the Circle and the Eighth Jonin. As he is uncovering this information, Bolan is also killing yakuza thugs, narrowly escaping underwater death, being rescued by naked pearl divers and fighting ninjas on top of a bullet train. This guy is a men's adventure machine!

The story races to a classic Bond-style climax, as Mack and Sandra infiltrate the Big Bad's castle grounds, which have been maintained as a kind of medieval Japanese theme park, complete with authentically garbed samurai and ninja guards ready to put real arrows, swords and lances into intruders' vital body parts. There they encounter both the terrorist Tanaga and the Eighth Jonin himself—who, unsurprisingly, is quite mad, bent on revenge for crimes against his ancestors, and determined to use Mack and Sandra as test subjects for his latest weapons of mass destruction. You can probably guess the rest.

This wasn't a great read, but I found it entertaining. As a student of ninjas in popular culture, I liked how it's like a mash-up of many popular ninja books and movies: the title and depiction of ninjutsu were clearly influenced by the first book on the subject in the West, Ninja: The Invisible Assassins  by Andrew Adams; the dramatic opening murder using a mysterious killing technique and the conspiracy of powerful Japanese industrialists brings to mind Eric Van Lustbader's seminal 1980 novel The Ninja; the pursuit of ninjas on the bullet train foreshadowed a scene in the excellent 1995 film The Hunted; the castle by the sea, the pearl divers and the mad Samurai overlord brought to mind the classic 1964 James Bond novel You Only Live Twice (and 1967 film) that introduced ninjas to the Western world. Add Mack "The Executioner" Bolan into the mix, and how can it be bad?

Get a copy of The Invisible Assassins here.

[Neilsone · Rating 2 out of 5]

Bought this at a grocery store in Ocean Shores while camping there with my family. I was in elementary school and I bought it because of the cover. The dude has throwing stars on his belt and a sweet gun, how is a 6th grader supposed to resist that! I read it all that weekend. When I was in elementary school I thought it was fun. One should feel free to judge this book by its cover.

[Jordan Anderson · Rating 3 out of 5]

After 3 (or maybe 4) straight up adrenaline fueled and action packed novels, the Executioner series takes a much needed breather.

This time around, Bolan travels to Japan to break up a gang war and, as usual, save the world from the brink of annihilation by going up against both ninjas and the Yakuza.

Instead of the non stop shootouts and break neck pace we’ve seen in the previous couple of entries, Invisible Assassins feels more on par with an Ian Fleming novel, focusing on espionage and spy craft, as well as a setting in an exotic locale.

While this wasn’t my favorite Executioner book, nor was it the best written, the slightly slower pacing, the more singular focus, and the use of everyone’s favorite mystical assassin, made for a fun and interesting entry into the series.

[Tim Deforest · Rating 3 out of 5]

Though a bit too slowly paced for an Executioner story (Mack Bolan doesn't get around to killing anyone until about page 80), the story is still well-constructed and entertaining. An important computer expert is killed in the U.S. An investigation leads to Japan, where Mack encounters Yakuza, ninjas and a plot for a bio-weapon attack on America.

The action does eventually pick up, with Mack sneaking into a Yakuza HQ, fighting assassins atop a bullet train and eventually ending up a prisoner in a medieval Japanese castle. This necessitates an escape (using a ploy directly lifted from the movie version of Goldfinger) and a sword duel against the main villain. Not the best Executioner novel, but still fun to read.

[Josh Hitch · Rating 4 out of 5]

This one was fun, written by Alan Bomack. Had more of a story, that frankly I didn't really catch what was going on til later in. Though still quite a bit of action. Bolan is directed to Japan based on some Intel on a murder he witnessed while investigating a blackmail scheme of some sort. While there he is playing catch up trying to figure what the murder was actually for, only knowing it was something big. He faces off against Yakuza thugs, a Yakuza leader who was a sumo wrestler, and ninja galore.

Highly recommended for fans of mens adventure.

[Michael David · Rating 1 out of 5]

When a Mack Bolan novel tries to deal with too much in too few pages, it ends up The Invisible Assassins. Too much focus was made on the murder of Shinoda, that the development towards the book's FINAL BOSS™ was much too rushed. Bolan was also saved by more than one dei-et-machina, and that isn't the Bolan I know. The ending was also a letdown.

[Mike · Rating 2 out of 5]

Fast read

[Davidus1 · Rating 3 out of 5]

Mediocre at best. The story was okay but wasn't told well. Cheesy at some points.

[Balkron · Rating 3 out of 5]

My Rating Scale:
1 Star - Horrible book, It was so bad I stopped reading it. I have not read the whole book and wont
2 Star - Bad book, I forced myself to finish it and do NOT recommend. I can't believe I read it once
3 Star - Average book, Was entertaining but nothing special. No plans to ever re-read
4 Star - Good Book, Was a really good book and I would recommend. I am Likely to re-read this book
5 Star - GREAT book, A great story and well written. I can't wait for the next book. I Will Re-Read this one or more times.

Times Read: 1

One of the first series I read consistently. This series and the Destroyer series are responsible for my love of reading and stories.

Characters - Looking back to my younger reading days, I loved Mack Bolan and thought he was one of the coolest characters in history. 30 years later, I realize that the characters were pretty stereotypical, but I still love him.

Story - The stories are average and fairly typical. Bad guys going to kill or hurt, Mack is going to kill them or die trying. Not much in creativity but it really worked for me as a male teenager. I wanted to own guns and protect the world just like Mack.

Overall - I started reading these when I was 16. I enjoyed them up until about age 19. My tastes changed from Military intrigue to Fantasy / SciFi. I would recommend reading these especially for younger males.

NOTE: I am going to rate these all the books in this series the same. Some of the stories are a bit better or a bit worse but I can't find one that I would rate a 2 or 4.

[colleen · Rating 3 out of 5]

read 07.31.84

[Sherry · Rating 1 out of 5]

I think it would be kind if you too read.