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Post by ripper on Jan 27, 2014 15:24:07 GMT
Jon Hart (John Harvey) - Mercenaries 1: Black Blood (Mayflower 1977)
This was the first entry in a five-book series featuring the adventures of a group of mercenaries led by Major Robert Kane. It is the mid-1960s and Major Kane leads a section of Mike Hoare's 5 Commando, a group of white mercenaries hired by the Congolese government to suppress a rebellion by Simba revolutionaries. There are four main mercenaries plus a CIA officer who joins them late in the book. There is lots of fast-paced action as Kane's men take the fight to the Simbas, who terrify the native Congolese army as they are thought to be impervious to bullets due to magic. Being a John Harvey book, it isn't quite as sadistic as if written by, say, Laurence James, but still there are nasty descriptions of massacres and plenty of bloodshed. Kane is set up by a jealous Congolese general and detained, and it is up to his core group to break him out and get to the airport where a jet is waiting to fly them to Rhodesia. This is a short novel, 128 pages, and the pace is fast. The mercenaries themselves are a bit of a motley bunch, anti-heroes rather than heroes, and even anti-hero doesn't aptly describe several of them. One is the son of an SS officer, who seems to share his father's racial views, while another forces himself on a Congolese woman at the start of the book. The book was written in 1977, so the Congo crisis was quite recent, plus there had been lots of news coverage of mercenary activity in Angola in the mid-1970s--anyone remember Colonel Callan?--so it is not surprising that a series like The Mercenaries appeared at the time. It is not a bad book, short enough not to outstay its welcome, though a little hurried at times, which is not surprising given its length. If you like general tough-guy action then you will probably enjoy this.
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Post by ab87063 on Dec 27, 2016 0:54:57 GMT
Jon Hart (John Harvey) - Mercenaries 1: Black Blood (Mayflower 1977) This was the first entry in a five-book series. Thanks Ripper for this write-up. I am doing lots of catching up but adding this one to my wish list. Sounds right up my alley. Eric paperbackwarrior.blogspot.com maximummetal.com |
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Post by ripper on Jan 3, 2017 10:22:58 GMT
Jon Hart (John Harvey) - Mercenaries 1: Black Blood (Mayflower 1977) This was the first entry in a five-book series. Thanks Ripper for this write-up. I am doing lots of catching up but adding this one to my wish list. Sounds right up my alley. Eric paperbackwarrior.blogspot.com maximummetal.com Hi Eric, The other 4 in the series are: High Slaughter, Triangle of Death, Death Raid and Guerrilla Attack. |
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Post by ab87063 on Jan 4, 2017 3:51:05 GMT
Thanks Ripper for this write-up. I am doing lots of catching up but adding this one to my wish list. Sounds right up my alley. Eric paperbackwarrior.blogspot.com maximummetal.com Hi Eric, The other 4 in the series are: High Slaughter, Triangle of Death, Death Raid and Guerrilla Attack. Awesome. Thanks so much for the info. |
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