A three-man strike force
accustomed to rescuing prisoners of war in the jungles of Vietnam is stateside
on a rogue mission in Los Angeles. Mark Stone, known as the MIA Hunter, is
asked by an old war buddy, now a deputy chief with LAPD, to help rescue Rick Chavez
from a Colombian drug cartel. Chavez is a Pulitzer award winning journalist who
has been writing a series of hard and insightful articles about the drug trade
in L. A. The articles have enough detail that the LAPD and the drug gangs—Crips,
Bloods and their Colombian suppliers—want to know where his information is
coming from.
When Stone and his team
arrive on scene, Chavez is being held prisoner in a palatial home in San
Clemente; a few doors down from Richard Nixon's house. It takes the team only a
few minutes, several hundred rounds of 9mm lead slung by MAC 10s, some smart
one liners, and a close call or three, to pull Chavez out of the house. But
this is the beginning for the MIA team because as the team is exfiltrating from
the firefight, Stone sees a familiar face. A face that belongs to a man who tried
to kill Mark Stone in Vietnam.
MIA Hunter: L. A. Gang War—the thirteenth entry in the series—is an entertaining
example of the men’s adventure mania of the 1980s. Originally
published in 1990 (an honorary member of the 1980s), it is a time capsule of the era, capturing society’s anxiety
with an escalating war on drugs, violent street gangs spreading the poison and
in the process claiming entire neighborhoods, all in the shadow of America's defeat
in Vietnam. It is non-stop action, accented with betrayal, revenge, and the MIA
team’s seeming endless supply of bravado and super hero combat skills. There is
also a touch of humor, if you look closely, and even a big idea or two. L. A. Gang War is a top-notch example of
both the series and the genre.
3 comments:
Ben, the MIA Hunter: L.A. Gang War series sounds like a spin-off of Don Pendleton's The Executioner as well as Able Team and Phoenix Force series, all of which are my kind of action novels.
Prashant. The MIA Hunter series is very much in the vein of The Executioner. In fact, Stephen Mertz was one of the early writers of the non-Don Pendleton Mack Bolan books in the mid-1980s.
I'm growing old, Ben. In a post on Mack Bolan couple of years ago, I did, in fact, mention that Stephen Mertz, Mike Newton, Thomas Ramirez, and Mel Odom were some of the writers of the non-Don Pendleton Mack Bolan novels. I should have remembered that.
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