November, 1974 Pinnacle Books
Don Pendleton has his template for The Executioner now and he’s sticking to it: New Orleans Knockout covers all the staples, from Mack “The Executioner” Bolan announcing his presence to the local mob via an introductory ambush, to lots of surveillance and head-games with said mob, to the local cops who secretly root for Bolan…even the now-standard phonecalls between Bolan and undercover Federal cop Leo Turrin, who provides Bolan with insider Mafia info. We even get the new-to-the-template staple of Bolan about to get laid at story’s end. But this time Bolan’s got a motor vehicle that fires rockets, man!
Really, I enjoyed New Orleans Knockout a lot, even though Pendleton still pulls the same copout as in previous books – another recurring staple, now that I think of it – where we are constantly teased with this big, climactic action scene that never happens. To wit, this is the umpteenth book in a row where Bolan finds out a ton of Mafia hardmen are converging on the titular city he happens to be in…but the huge battle never happens. I guess this is Pendleton’s way of showing us how Bolan gets by with his wits rather than his firepower, but this too is getting to be a bit much; at this point in The Executioner, one gets the impression that taking down the mob is as simple as making a few threatening phone calls and impersonating an enforcer. And having a motor home that fires rockets.
As ever we open with a preemptory hit as Bolan makes his presence known in New Orleans; a cool opening in which Bolan, clad in black and his skin painted black, infiltrates the grounds of fashion-forward capo Carlotti. Again Bolan is presented as almost superhuman; the sequence is told from Carlotti’s point of view, and Bolan just appears in the man’s home, holding a gun to his head, despite there being armed guards everywhere. This leads to a crazed part that prefigures the ‘90s flick Speed where Carlotti drives into the compound of another New Orleans capo, but Carlotti can’t take his foot off the accelerator, or the bomb Bolan has wired there will go off. Pendleton well relays, mostly via dialog, how painful this is for Carlotti, who has not been able to move his leg for so long that it’s gone numb; I started massaging my own leg muscles in sympathy.
We get the usual stuff with a local cop who soon learns the Executioner is afoot in his city, and receives random phone calls from the man himself, secretly offering this most wanted “criminal” assistance. In other words, the usual thing; I almost wonder if we’ll ever have a future installment with a Sheriff Buford T. Justice-type who is determined to bring Bolan down no matter what. Otherwise what’s interesting this time is the cop is named Jack Petro, and so of course I just assumed he was related to Kathy Petro.
The biggest news in New Orleans Knockout is that Bolan has now acquired a massive GM motor home that he’s spent over $300k in mob money on, $100k of which was dedicated to outfitting the “war wagon” in state-of-the-art surveillance equipment, as well as the aforementioned rocket-firing system, which comes out of the rooftop with the press of a button. Curiously, we learn the motor home is not armored, and the windows aren’t bulletproof. Also, I didn’t get a good mental image of how the vehicle operates, particularly some of the weapons stuff. For example, we’re told Bolan doesn’t even use his hand to fire the rockets, and does it all with his leg, moving the sighting system and whatnot and then “slamming” his own leg with his fist to fire the rocket. Honestly this gave the entire scene some unintentional humor, as I just pictured his madman sitting in his huge motor home, watching a viewcreen and then randomly hitting his own leg.
Another notable development in New Orleans Knockout is the return of future Able Team members Pol Balancales and Gadgets Schwartz. However they really aren’t in the book that much, and are just an extra plot Maguffin; in reality, Bolan spends more time with Pol’s sexy “kid” sister, Toni Balancales, in her early 20s and spectacularly built, though Pendleton as ever doesn’t dwell much on naughty stuff. It is nice though that he’s finally decided to cater to genre norms and give us a willing babe each volume. Toni too falls into the template, as she has the plucky, “I’m tough but I’m still a woman” demeanor as most other Pendleton gals.
Speaking of unintentional humor, there’s a lot of it with Toni and Bolan. As we all know, Mack Bolan’s trademark phrase is “Stay hard,” and, well…Bolan keeps telling Toni to “stay hard,” leading to Toni to respond, “I’ve got to get hard…you stay hard!” It’s all quite goofy and funny, and it’s clear Pendleton doesn’t realize this (but then, maybe he did). But also, what with this plucky girl saying she needs to “get hard,” it all has a bit of a postmodern ring in our “gender is fluid” modern day.
I got the impression Pendleton had recently read – or watched – The Anderson Tapes, as quite a bit of New Orleans Knockout concerns bugging and surveilling mobsters, with Bolan often sitting in the “command chair” of his motor home and listening to people talk far away, Pendleton delivering it all like a transcript much as Lawrence Sanders did in his best-seller. But Pendleton has certainly done his homework on surveillance. Toni informs Bolan that Pol and Gadgets started up “Able Group,” a private eye outfit that specializes in bugging places, typically working for companies that want to surveil other companies, and we get a lot of detail on the hardware they use. Recently the two were approached by a “Mr. Kirk,” who claimed to be a fed and tasked them with bugging one of the New Orleans Mafia bigwigs. Now Pol and Gadgets are missing, and Toni is close to panic as it’s been a week. Bolan quickly deduces that “Mr. Kirk” was none other than mobster Carlotti, looking to bug a rival don.
Not to worry, though, as taking down the Mafia is essentially a cakewalk. It’s such a breeze for Bolan that there is no moment where he seems out of sorts or caught unawares. He slips in and out of Mafia hardsites pretending to be a troubleshooter from the organization, once again falling on that “Ace of Spades” gambit where he flips a poker card over as a sign of who he “really” is, and of course the mobsters blab freely, not knowing it’s the Executioner himself standing before them. Bolan at this point is toying with them; his goal seems to be to get all the families to kill each other, and to do so he plays mental tricks – like using a sniper rifle to blow apart a golf ball just as a mob chieftan is about to swing at it, and then calling him later to taunt him.
Gil Cohen’s typically-great cover is both accurate and misleading. Accurate because the climax does take place during Mardis Gras, but misleading because neither Bolan’s prey nor the girl he’s holding at gunpoint are wearing costumes. Bolan however is wearing his blacksuit, so Cohen got that part correct. Getting to the climax, though, there really isn’t much in the way of action. Really, at this point Bolan takes down the mob mostly via phone calls and listening in on conversations. We’re often told of enemy forces encamped around the area, but Bolan slips in and out of their base camps with no problem; Pendleton is so focused on suspense over action that he even casually informs us that Bolan hits a couple places during his travels around the area, leaving these action scenes entirely off-page.
Instead, Pendleton saves the fireworks for the finale, as Bolan takes his motor home onto the insanely-crowded streets of New Orleans just as Mardis Gras begins. This part alone is the most unbelievable element in the entirety of New Orleans Knockout, but Pendleton spends enough time on it that he makes it seem believable: Bolan, his motor home disguised as a mobile TV news station, creeping along the streets while engulfed by a human tide of partiers. Cohen’s cover art illustrates a scene that occurs here, as Bolan goes out into the crowd to rescue Toni, who has briefly been taken captive – even this happens and is resolved so quickly that, again, it all seems to be so easy for our hero. I mean Bolan just blows the mobster’s brains out, even though the guy’s holding a gun to Toni’s head and his twitching nerves might cause his finger to jerk on the trigger.
Anton Chekhov would have been well pleased, as Pendleton follows the “gun on the mantleplace” dictum of Chekhov, or whatever it Chekhov called it; after teasing us about the rockets on the motor home throughout the narrative, Pendleton does indeed have Bolan employ them in the novel’s climax. This is on an assault of a fortified mob hardsite, Bolan blasting the shit out of the place with three rockets and then dispensing mercy shots to the flaming, screaming victims of his assault. For once Bolan comes close to the murderous, cipher-like vibe of imitators Johnny Rock and Philip Magellan, in an ending scene that has him gunning down a defenseless old man…and then briefly feeling bad about it, but brushing it off because the old man was a Mafia boss, so he deserved it.
Pol and Gadgets stay off-page, and instead it’s up to Toni Balancales to see Bolan off…another humorous bit where she calls Bolan on his motor home’s mobile phone and demands that Bolan pick her up so she can give him some good lovin’ before he leaves town. And Bolan keeps trying to talk her out of it! Again though, Pendleton has finally decided to acquiesce to the genre and has Bolan ultimately decide to pick Toni up so he can bang her brains out…off-page, of course, as the novel ends here.
All told, I enjoyed New Orleans Knockout quite a bit, but at this point The Executioner is almost becoming cartoonish with its breezy disregard for reality. Not that I have a problem with that, it’s just that Pendleton’s overly-serious narratorial voice clearly indicates that he himself doesn’t see it all as cartoonish, which is kind of crazy. I mean, at least the uncredited ghostwriters of The Sharpshooter and The Marksman knew their protagonists were psychopaths.