The Executioner

The Executioner (a.k.a. Mack Bolan) is a monthly men's action-adventure paperback book series (published from 1969 - 2020) following the exploits of the character Mack Bolan and his wars against organized crime and international terrorism. The series has sold more than 200 million copies since its 1969 debut installment, War Against the Mafia. The regular series includes 464 novels (as of December 2020 when the series ended). Every other month, the Executioner series was complemented by the release of a Super Bolan, which were twice the length of a standard Executioner novel. There were 178 "Super Bolans" (as of December, 2015 when that series ended). The Executioner was created and initially written by American author Don Pendleton, who penned 37 of the original 38 Bolan novels (he did not write #16). In 1980, Pendleton licensed the rights to Gold Eagle and was succeeded by a collective of ghostwriters. Some Pinnacle printings in the middle of Pendleton's original series carried a photo and brief article on the author, showing that Pendleton was not just a "house name". Pinnacle Books was bought by Kensington Publishing (Zebra Books and others), and retained the rights to the original 38 novels; they were briefly reissued in the late 1980s-early 1990s.