Deadly Agent

This one starts off pretty slow due to an ordinary far fetched plot where the villan is going to unleash mutated virus's at different locations forcing the world to recognise him as the ruler of the planet. From information obtained the Teams have a listing of storage sites and labs but not where the finished product will be unleashed from. What follows is some pretty good reading as whilst these sites are being taken down various evidence is left to make the villan think they are the results of accidents etc. and not to spook him into premature release of his Deadly Agents (good title). The villan is captured and taken to his office to obtain a code book which will allow Stony Man to decrypt the locations of the launch sites. What happens in his office and later when he bolts out of the car is good reading. With the locations of the launch sites the Teams make assaults on each to recover or destroy the Agents and again there is some fine reading here with the title finishing off quite well. As has been mentioned there are a couple of glaring errors in this title with Lyons, Encizo and James characters which shows either a lack of knowledge by the author on who he is writing about or not checking on what he has written. How this got through amazes me as surely when the author submits his work it is checked by proof readers or sub editors prior to being printed. So reasonable read here up to you.

This was a so-so story that really didn't engage me. The plot has a meglomaniac Czech politician wanting to create a new Bohemian empire by attacking the West using chemical weapons. Bolan and crew run around Europe and America foiling each attack and destroying storage silos. I had the feeling throughout the book that vanCook wasn't really sure about the characters that he was writing about. Carl Lyons dwells on his "experiences" in Vietnam and when Katz is injured Enzico administers first aid while Calvin James, the corpsman, looks on. The time line was also very disjointed. At the end of one chapter Bolan is trapped in a buring building. We then switch to Able Team who travel from the East Coast to Middle America. Then back to Bolan who manages to escape the flames. Phoenix Force also managed to get around far too quickly. On the good side, Charley Mott was included in the Able Team adventures. But, all in all it was very average.

Just a so-so adventure. I was sort of disappointed by VanCook.