I think you're on the right track. The "whole truth" about apologetical books
is that they cannot be tarred with a single, broad brush.
For instance, in Gish, "Creation Scientists Answer Their Critics" (ICR 1993),
the transition problem is always discussed as one of the VAST lack of
transitions (plural) we should expect.
For exampl, Gish writes "If evolution is true, then at least many tens of
thousands of the quarter of a million fossil species in our museums should
consist of unquestionable transitional forms. This would be true even if one
invokes the so-called 'punctuated equilibria' mode of evolution. There would
be absolutely no challenge to the fact of evolution, no Institute for Creation
Research, no Creation Research Society, no scientific creationists." (Id. at
112)
Gish is right. That's the key issue. One arguable transitional form is not
going to do it. Especially when that form has numerous problems (e.g., the
Mesonychid-Ambulocetus problem) and when the only mechanism suggested is
Goldschmidtism.
The central fact which most apologetic books make is that there is a lack of
SEQUENCES, the very thing Darwin thought should be there. The history of
evolutionary thought for the last fifty years has been trying to find ways to
get out of this central, fatal conundrum.
Jim