Betrayal

Fair read here only I reckon. This title has two main plots running where the first is a continuation of the previous title Breach of Trust with many familiar bits and pieces from that story and the second basically a behind the scenes look at the Blacksuit program at the Farm. The first of the plots find the Team's plus Mack and Jack once again back in Russia where an election is pending due to the death of the President. The Russian Mafiya has recovered from the death of Rostov in the previous title and has a suitable successor. With the Russian Mafiya backing a General in the election for it's own purposes and the General having quite a lot of the military in his pocket it appears he will be successful in his aim to become President which basically results in a rewrite of the previous title, not much here with the exception of the tank section with the bridge which was some good reading. Surprisingly the other plot is the better reading where a detailed behind the scenes look at the Stony Man recruitment program of their Blacksuits is described and the infiltration of it by a sleeper Russian agent who is a graduate from Little Amerika named Jim Gordon. He manages to successfully escape in this title but he will be back for sure so something to look forward to in a future title. Well up to you with this one as I started with a fair read here only.

Lackluster followup to “Breach of Trust.” The villain is not as competent as Rostoff. Jim Gordon is not competent at all. The bumbling spy’s unfortunate name conjures up a mental image of a man with red hair and black wide framed glasses for some reason. “Betrayal” shows Stony Man never learned from the mistake in “Breach of Trust” that they continue to influence Russia. There are a lot of references to the previous title. What is strange is that the incoherent continuity. How many weeks, months, years since Rostoff was offed? The book is silent on those details. Since they are sequential, it should have been days or weeks later, with team members recovering from their wounds in that installment. Instead there is no mention of Schwarz’s torture wounds. “Betrayal” may have been intended to be released months or a year later than it should have. Missing tanks, missing girlfriend, Encizo and James buying dope, VIP protection duty and a spy applying for blacksuit duty. These are the several plot lines going on in the first fifty pages or so. With too many plot threads, with about a hundred one-two page POV changes, this novel suffers from lack of focus. They eventually settle on two main plots: Gordon and the politician. The parts I like? The integrated teams. The entire bridge sequence. The plot idea of destroying a corrupt politician’s dirty tricks inventory right before an election. A chance to have continuity in a later novel. I also enjoy viewing the hiring process, structure, numbers and inside details of the Stony Man security force, aka the Blacksuits. The plot has flashes of brilliance, but the execution suffers. The dump truck with the heroin scene. The kidnaping of their liaison’s girlfriend, these sequences smack of, at worst, word padding. A number of scenes finish in rushed matter. I found several examples of a detailed entry capped with a paragraph of a sudden, sketchy ending. I would like to see the author, Kasner, update this novel with Iraqi elections. The Gordon subplot was compelling, giving an uninformed opinion of the Russian mission and frankly giving the Stony Man personnel something to do for once.

I was trying to read the Stony man series in order but skipped ahead to this one based on the cover and synopsis. I'm glad I did. This book contains 2 gripping plot threads that could each carry their own book. As usual, Kassner gives plenty of action and I found myself wrapped in one thread ( the Stony mission in Russia) and but still anxious to get to the other (an enemy agent at the Farm) and vice versa. I found myself hoping that the Russian Wolverine Force would survive to pop up again as a sort of anti-Stony Man force. There's no skimping on the action or plot. I'm looking forward to Mr Kassner's continuation of some of the Betrayal plot.

Kasner really did his homework -- or maybe it was just excellent fabricating -- in filling out backstory on the blacksuits with the whole betrayal storyline. My only problem, as it always is with any battle scenes taking place at the Farm, is the lack of credibility. How many times can this place be attacked before the neighbors catch on (and never mind all the assumed tactical drills and flights from the airfield). Like others, I think these Stony Man books are overpopulated to the point where characters become indistinguishable at times and it gets difficult to follow so many parallel storylines. Maybe it's time for a DAY OF MOURNING house-cleaning where a handful of the regulars meet their maker and a new, smaller team emerges from the dust, made up of the survivors from Able Team and Phoenix Force.

Overall, I thought it was a decent entry. It seemed like two complete storylines going on simultaneously. The blacksuit story was pretty entertaining because I learned a lot more about blacksuit life. The russian story was pretty good, but not as strong in my opinion. I thought the bridge scene was amazing though! Brought some tears to my eyes when it finally went! This one had a great ending too. . . :)

This was a very good entry, I thought. Excellent attention to detail and characters. Michael Kasner seems to be the most consistent Bolan writer.

Action-packed,sure,they all are.The bridge scene was great. The BLACKSUIT story,well...Listen,the guys complain about being bored.Didn't the FARM get raided a bunch of times?The last time by ABLE TEAM?ABLE damn near KILLED half of the BLACKSUITS.I know that between all of the writers it is hard to maintain continuity, but still... Also,in Russian,no mention of GROMYLKO.Who?The Russian cop from BLOOD STAR.How come he was not contacted?Small details,but... You know,I am starting to wonder if the FARM should not be moved. With all the raids and JAMES GORDON(a wink to BATMAN fans maybe?) on the loose,it isn't that top secret anymore. But despite all of that,yes,I did like the book overall.

Strikers the man alright and there's no stoping him. I really like the intro of Jim Gordon and i can't wait to see when he pops up again. For that this is a must read and own.

Expecting an immediant follow up to Breach of Trust, I was a little disappointed to find that the story took place month's or even years later. Bolan had very little to do or say in this one, and he was almost entirely missing from the big tank sequence. The last we hear of Bolan, is where he is about to take a postion to cover the others. That was it. Perhaps Mr Kasner doesn't like Bolan being in the Stony Man novels but has to place him in anyway. If so then fine, but please find Bolan something better to do, away from Able Team and Phoenix Force. I do enjoy seeing Able Team overseas again. The story at Stony Man Farm with Gorden was great. I found myself not a little unsypathetic to his postion, especially when Price and co decided on his termination after watching him play poker. The big question for me was how can Buck Greene say that somebody is a former KGB agent just by watching him cheat at poker. That stretched the credibility a little to thin. To be suspicious, yes. To deduce immediantly that he his a sleeper agent for the former USSR, no. Otherwise an allround good story. I look forward to seeing Gorden again.

This is going to sound like I'm giving a reaming to Kasner, so let me get the good part of this novel out of the way first. The title plotline (as opposed to the cover story with McCarter and the tanks) Betrayal was a fantastic one. For a story with next to zero bodycount, just a war of nerves between Buck Greene and Aaron Kurtzman and the sleeper Jim Gordon (Holy Communist Threat, Batman!) it would have made a very tight Executioner novel. Trim it down to 250 pages by deleting the rest of the Stony crews, maybe having Bolan working his way home, making a few stop off kills to keep the Dan Schmidt fans from falling asleep, and this would have been one of the absolute best of the Executioner series. When I first got into it, flipping to the end, I felt that the traitor storyline would be kind of boring. In fact, it was the most interesting thing in the whole book. Stony Man in Russia? Don't shoot me down, but it felt crowded and impacted. The little Able Team mission in the US was thoroughly uninteresting. It seemed like padding. And speaking of padding... Bolan, Katz, Phoenix, Able and Grimaldi all together, with Belikov. Belikov and Katz were about the only people with a chance at characterization, except for James when he and Katz were discussing his plans as bait. Giving Calvin some scenes to himself was one thing I enjoyed, as was Belikov's attempt to rescue his girlfriend. But switching off between Blancanales and Encizo? Rafe goes off with the bridge team, where he does get a shining moment (yay, right Jana?) taking down some armor, but he was already involved in the mob dealings. Even Bolan- a man who's penetrated Russia on at least a half dozen occasions while Greb Strahkov was ACTIVELY hunting him- comes off as furniture. Bolan may not be fluent in Russian like Katz is (then again, few humans are as capable in as many languages as Katz was with his 40 years of experience) but he learned and studied hard enough to take on the KGB on a regular basis without being behind the language 8-ball. (A similar strategy he used with the Mafia.) I don't know... maybe if these weren't established characters, I wouldn't have felt so disappointed at the guys being thrown into the same bag to smother in. (Or more directly, if this were a Black Ops novel, then maybe some more spark would show.) As for the delivery of the heroin to the trash yard for burning... WHAT THE HECK WAS THAT? (Kasner's gonna hate me for sure... but then, this novel's not his fault, he just has to fit Bolan, Barb, Hal, Aaron, Katz, McCarter, Manning, Hawkins, James, Encizo, Lyons, Gadgets - not Schwartz dammit!, Blancanales, Akira, Hunt, Kissenger and Grimaldi in,while also coming up with more supporting characters, villains, and whatnot. And not even a sign of Carmen Delahunt anywhere. If she showed, up, this book might have collapsed under critical mass and gone nuclear! It's nice that Stony Man has 18 (19 if you remember Charlie Moss) supporting characters after some lean years, just that having them all at work and devoting any time to any other characters BLEEDS energy and life from the book. Sort of like the Batman movies. Batman vs Catwoman or Penguin would have been a tight movie. Having all three simply bogged down and killed Batman Returns. That's what's happening often with the Stony Man novels.)

I thought this book was awesome! I could not put it down!! Able and Phoenix fights in the same mission... I love that!! Its awesome to see some more detail at the Farm. The life of blacksuits, I thought that was well done by Kasner. This has to be one of my favorites next to Reprisal. When Gordon saw Barbara Price going to the shooting range and found out Gordon was a bad guy, I predicted at the end Price would end up killing him at some time in the book. But when he just went off to Texas not even being noticed, I was, a little disappointed... I give it two thumbs WAY up... and I found the blacksuit storyline better than the regular Russian pres story.

A decent but somewhat different entry into the Stony-Man series. Not quite the follow-up to 'Breach Of Trust' that I had envisioned. The alternating storylines were interesting. Although, the blacksuit sleeper agent was for more interesting. Bolan seemed very stiff and uncharacteristically quiet in this one. It was as though Kasner was forced to write him in. The Russian mafia storyline would have done fine even if Mack Bolan wasn't in it. Katz appeared to be the big boss in this one, even Bolan seemed to jump whenever issued an order. Hope to see more of the KGB sleeper agent in a future novel. All in all, this was just a mediocre book.

While I found this better than Breach of Trust, it was just an average novel. The Jim Gordon subplot was done fairly well, but for the exception of the tank batallion battle, the action scenes were not as explosive as I would have liked. I'd give it **1/2 out of ****