Claw

A race against time for Bolan as he attempts to be the first to find Buchanan and comes up against hired killers of all kinds but are there any he can trust? Even those who supposedly work for the Government. The many characters that fill this book help keep the attention as they all hunt for Buchanan. Plenty of action as to be expected from a Bolan/Executioner book and a plot that has all the threads tied up by the end. Having only read westerns by Mike Linaker (he doesn’t live that far from me) I was intrigued to see how he’d handle a modern day book and wasn’t surprised to find he does it very well, providing an exciting read that made me wonder about the possibility of the human/machine interface. An idea that paints a pretty grim future for the world when it becomes reality and makes you wonder as to how long this planet has left.

This is an incredibly fast moving book that seems to be one violent confrontation after another. A book with a massive death toll that sees Bolan using all of Stony Man’s resources to hunt The Ghoul down. Highlights for me was seeing how The Ghoul seemed to be one step ahead of Bolan all the time, the shopping centre chase, the tension filled approach to a farm... I also smiled at the inclusion of some comments about comic books being one of the few pure American art forms. And I was amazed at the facts and figures revealed on page 104 of how many people go missing each year. After the continuous action of the rest of the book the final scenes seemed understated in comparison, which for me made the finale all the more powerful.