Edge Of Hell [Mass Market Paperback]

We open with Bolan dismantling arms dealer Sonny Westerbridge's organization, and there will be plenty of mindless violence and mayhem. There is no explanation as to how we got there and as to what got under Bolan's skin to put him on Westerbrige's trail, so as we start off with lots of bang-bangs, just relax and bath in the blood and listen to Bolan's song of death.

In an alternate universe London, where blowing up such things doesn't elicit much in the way of publicity, Bolan is trotting back to his hotel room after this excursion when he comes across something that shocks even this hardened warrior. He comes across a man dressed like Jack the Ripper slicing open a woman and tossing her innards hither and thither.

Not much for small talk, Bolan opens up and attempts to blast the erstwhile neo-Ripper to hell. Unfortunately he's not only wearing some uncharacteristically modern Kevlar armor under his eighteenth century duds, he also has some sidekicks that carry modern machine guns.

So starts this uncharacteristic novel as Bolan and the Ripper (Liam Tern) start playing cat and mouse with each other.

It seems that Tern has been hired by Etienne DeSimmones organization to take care of some of the British Empire's more embarrassing problems in this low profile (?!?) manner. In this case a newspaper publisher has been murdered, and the prostitute that was unwittingly involved, was the Ripper's victim that had to be eliminated. This type of governmental black ops just rubs Bolan's raspberries raw and so it's time to clean-up London before he leaves for greener pastures.

To help Bolan fight the good fight against the evil he gets some false Boston police creds from Hal Brognola of Stony Man so that he can get visiting privileges from the London coppers. He's assigned to Kevin Goh and his partner, the hard-boiled Melissa Dean, whose sister British Army Lieutenant Melanie will end up being one of DeSimmones organization's victims.

Mack Bolan being your typical serial pulp superhero, rather characterless and wooden, full of righteous anger, and more willing than not to kill everybody and just let God sort them out, although here, in an effort to gather information, author Doug Wojtowicz scales the senseless murder down somewhat in that Bolan keeps trying to keep somebody alive long enough to gather some intel. It doesn't really work, but the story is kept alive in that Wojtowicz gives this nonsense a sense of mystery and suspense, and enough twists and turns to keep the plot interesting. Dean is an interesting character however, a woman in a man's job and all that, then having to witness, and then avenge her sister's death. I'd read a solo novel starring her, maybe she'll make a return someday.

The basic problem is that all good heroes need good villains, and Bolan just doesn't get one here. DeSimmones at first sends Vincent Black, a top mob hitman, who seems to be a good counterpoint to Bolan, but he gets wasted, as does the next psychopath; Tern himself is either mostly off-stage from Bolan, or fighting with DeSimmones throughout the novel. So despite being a clichéd cackling, blood-licking-from-a-knife madman (yeah, that's here), he only has a show down with Bolan in the last chapter. A reoccurring villain that keeps fighting Bolan throughout the novel would have given this actioner an extra star.

"Edge Of Hell" seems to exist in an alternate universe where cops get into constant bloody shoot-outs without having to so much as file a report, and in a world where hummingbirds can't fart without all major networks shoving a microphone up it's heini in an effort to try to find out if it's bad bird seed or a polyp, can we really believe that chunks of London can get blown up real good, or a major hospital can get shot up (real good), and neither would get so much as a news blip?

This novel is marketed as a Jack the Ripper novel done Bolan style, but it's not. It's Bolan cleaning up some slimy governmental black ops instead of some urban terrorists with plenty of gratuitous and redundant violence. Still, I found it a loud and rude bit of fun with some cross-over appeal to serial killer novel enthusiasts, and enough weapons techno-talk that will cause all weapons enthusiasts to wet their pants.

This quickly read novel gets four stars as it's a good, fast, and bloody modern pulp action adventure that spills enough brains to populate a Washington think tank. We don't judge these things on the same level as "War and Peace".

For this site I have also reviewed the following Mack Bolan novel:

Tactical Response (Stonyman, 52)

I have also reviewed these other action novels, some have some fantastic elements:

The Blonde by Duane Swierczynski
The Condemned (WWE) by Rob Heddon
Deadfall by Shaun Jeffrey
THE DESERT by Bryon Morrigan
Frightening Strikes (The Destroyer) by Warren Murphy
Hitman: Enemy Within by William C. Dietz
Severance Package by Duane Swierczynski
Star Wars: Death Troopers by Joe Schreiber

› Go to Amazon U.S. to see the review  4.0 out of 5 stars