Altered State

Super Bolan #129

by Michael Newton, Don Pendleton (Series Creator)

Kabul, Afghanistan, remains a front line within a bureaucratic civil war, where spooks, soldiers, fanatics and narcotics collide in profit and death. Added to the mix are rumors of a heroin operation now run by America's largest and most respected private security firm. With no legal remedy on hand, Mack Bolan is dispatched on a scorched-earth mission that threatens to expose more than just hand-holding deep inside the Beltway. With his identity compromised from the start, the Executioner hooks up with a seasoned DEA agent and local informant, blowing out the infrastructure of a massive narco-traffic operation brick by brick, and exposing the long arm of a traitor.

320 pages, Mass Market Paperback

First published January 1, 2009

About the author

Librarian Note: There is more than one author by this name in the Goodreads database.

From Wikipedia:
"Michael Newton (born 1951) is an American author best known for his work on Don Pendleton's Mack Bolan series. Newton first began work on the Executioner series by co-writing "The Executioner's War Book" with Don Pendleton in 1977. Since then he has been a steady writer for the series with almost 90 entries to his credit, which triples the amount written by creator Don Pendleton. His skills and knowledge of the series have allowed him to be picked by the publishers to write the milestone novels such as #100, #200, and #300.

Writing under the pseudonym Lyle Brandt, Michael Newton has also become a popular writer of Western novels. He has written a number of successful non-fiction titles as well, including a book on genre writing (How to Write Action Adventure Novels). His book Invisible Empire: The Ku Klux Klan in Florida won the Florida Historical Society's 2002 Rembert Patrick Award for Best Book in Florida History. Newton's "Encyclopedia of Cryptozoology" won the American Library Association's award for Outstanding Reference Work in 2006."

Pen names: Lyle Brandt, Don Pendleton, Jack Buchanan

Bibiliography available here.

Reviews

[Paul Berner · Rating 5 out of 5]

Altered State

The read was good and held your interest through the whole book. Lots of action and surprises. Looking forward to the next book.

[Jim A · Rating 3 out of 5]

It's been over 30 years since I read a Mack Bolan action novel by Don Pendleton (actually a ghost writer).

This book gets three stars for my memories of The Executioner series in the late 70's and very early 80's, not for content or story line of this Mack Bolan entry. But the fact that the series still existed when this was written, 2009, shows the popularity of the action character.