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December 20, 2009 in: -> 11 Comments so far

I finished I, Sniper. If you’re one of the whiners who professed disappointment with The 47th Samurai, or Night of Thunder, this one will shut you up. Hunter is right back on the top of the game he mastered with Time To Hunt and Point of Impact. And Clint Eastwood should play Bob Lee for the movie.

If you’re planning on purchasing a copy of I, Sniper in the after-Christmas sales, you should be thinking ahead to your next book excusion. I, Sniper is not a particularly fast read, like Night of Thunder was, but it’s so good you’ll call in sick to work in order to keep reading.

So the next book I’m reading is Monster Hunter International by Larry Correia. Somebody on the web recommended “If you like Stephen Hunter books, you’ll like this one…” so I bought it. It’s good. But it’s also got a great story behind the book… Correia is a thirties-something fella from Utah who self-published his book to such favorable response that a real publisher picked it up. Check Correia and his book out here. If you order a book directly from Correia, I recommend you add $3 for the patch – later, you’ll be sorry that you didn’t. I am.

December 8, 2009 in: , -> 2 Comments so far

Mmm, mmm.

I, Sniper is the best book Hunter has written since Pale Horse Coming.

The story is simply arresting. And simultaneously compelling. I am 130 pages in, and don’t have the digits to count the number of times I paused to think “Holy Shit” – only to drop it and immediately jump right back in because I couldn’t wait to get to the next paragraph.

I thought I would share tonight’s 42nd such moment. Describing Bob Lee sitting in an uncomfortable “terrible plastic chair” at DFW, homeward bound, Hunter has Bob Lee think:

…the old man could get back to his rocking chair and watch the weather chemistry manufacture clouds the size of castles and more complicated structures over the blue-green meadow that fell back for miles until it broke apart on a sawtooth snarl of mountains.

Poetry. Billions of english words have been published since Gutenberg was inspired, and Hunter still manages to come up with fresh stuff like this.

I’m done now. Back to the book…

November 28, 2009 in: , -> 7 Comments so far

Hunter’s coming book tour supporting I, Sniper has been announced:

November 15, 2009 in: -> 2 Comments so far

Kirkus reports in with a thumbs-up review of I, Sniper:

In his guns-a-poppin’ latest, Hunter pits his series hero (Night of Thunder, 2007, etc.) against a nest of sharp-shooting vipers.

For a while, Carl Hitchcock was viewed as the ultimate warrior: a super marine, a sniper extraordinaire, none more famous. Credited with 93 kills in Vietnam, he traveled the gun-show circuit, basked in gunslinger glory, sold autographs, raked in testimonial money and was an authentic NRA rock star. But then Hitchcock cracked, went rogue, took to taking down certain of those who, back in the day, had been in the vanguard of the anti-Vietnam war movement; inevitably, the media tagged him the “Peacenik Sniper.” Eventually, after relentless pursuit by the FBI, Hitchcock saw no way out but to shoot himself.

Or so the narrative went. Persuasive as it was to virtually all, it left Bob Lee Swagger unsettled. In his view, a renegade Carl Hitchcock was a contradiction in terms. The behavior ascribed to him was a betrayal of the code of warrior honor. In short, it was not “the sniper way.” It smacked of conspiracy, dark and dirty.

Asked by FBI good guy Nick Memphis to help with the investigation, Bob Lee soon proves himself right while proving to others that no dark-and-dirty conspiracy, no matter how powerfully mounted, is safe so long as there are knightly snipers to keep the faith. Ah, but there are wicked snipers, too, just as sharp-eyed, trigger fingers every bit as quick. Really? Well, dust off the OK Corral.

Even the somewhat squeamish (11 shivery pages amount to a tutorial in how to endure water-boarding), and even certifiable gun-dummies, may once again find chivalric, heroic Bob Lee just about irresistible.

November 4, 2009 in: -> 4 Comments so far

And Publishers Weekly says….

Bestseller Hunter keeps Bob Lee Swagger, his home-spun, hard-charging hero, doing what Swagger does best in his sixth novel to feature the former Marine sniper: thwarting the authorities, staying loyal to a disappearing code of honor and hunting down evildoers who deserve everything they get. When a sniper shoots dead Joan Flanders (think Jane Fonda) and three other victims associated with the 1960s peace movement, the FBI decides the killer is “the most famous sniper in America,” Carl Hitchcock, who’s gone nuts and decided to up his total number of kills. Swagger soon realizes that Hitchcock, a fellow ex-Marine and Vietnam vet, is innocent, while the real killer, who’s using cutting-edge, electronic sniper gear, is still at large. After two inferior Bob Lee Swagger books, The 47th Samurai (2007) and Night of Thunder (2008), Hunter is back at the top of his game. He’s the best on the subject of guns and what damage bullets can do to human flesh.

I, Sniper is scheduled for release in January 2010.

October 25, 2009 in: -> One Response so far

Library Journal says:

Hunter’s thrillers are always taut, exciting, and well written, and his latest is no exception. There’s also a lot of gun and tech talk as Swagger uses decades’ worth of skills to stay a step or three ahead of the baddies. Swagger fans will not be disappointed.

October 10, 2009 in: -> One Response so far

Here’s Booklist’s review of I, Sniper written by Bill Ott…

Bob Lee Swagger, former Vietnam sniper, has been out of his element lately—tangling with a killer who uses his car as a weapon (Night of Thunder, 2008) and swapping his rifle for a sword (The 47th Samurai, 2007), but this time, he’s back in his wheelhouse: sniper versus sniper. It starts with three assassinations of Vietnam-era protestors with obvious links to real-life figures (an actress who cavorted in Hanoi; a convicted bomber turned Chicago professor; and an antiwar comic and singer). The suspect in the shootings, another celebrated sniper, is tracked by the FBI, only to be found dead, apparently a suicide.

But Bob isn’t buying it; the case against the dead man is too airtight, the kill shots too perfect for an aging warrior working without today’s computer-powered scopes. So even when the FBI backs off, Bob Lee marches on, determined to exonerate the framed sniper, force the hand of the man behind the scenes, and turn the tide of public opinion, now set firmly against what he calls “the brotherhood of life-takers.” It’s a troubling moral position, of course, the idea of the sniper as a man of courage, and Hunter makes the most of it, demanding that the reader rethink common cultural assumptions about good and evil. Those philosophical underpinnings give the narrative depth, but finally, as all Bob Lee fans know, it comes down
to “straight killing time.” And so it does, in a ramped-up, high-tech High Noon finale that will leave even unsympathetic readers gasping. As always, Hunter makes it work with precise, detail-rich prose that strips the faux glamour from gun fighting and leaves only the skills of the combatants set against the horrors they wreak.

September 22, 2009 in: -> 3 Comments so far

A reader writes:

I, too, am fascinated by the order in which the Swagger books should be read.  However, I take the approach that one should read the Earl Swagger books first, when Bob Lee is growing up.  This would make the chronology a time line of Bob Lee’s life, from youth to almost senior citizen.  I find the Earl Swagger books fascinating in their own right, second only to the Bob Lee series.  If this thought is palpable, how would the “entire series” of Swagger books be read?

September 19, 2009 in: -> One Response so far

Killing me. This is just killing me.

Stephen Hunter’s publicist has sent me an advance copy of the first review of I, Sniper… penned by Bill Ott, at Booklist, the premiere reviewer of books in America today… and Ott says Hunter’s latest is what we Hunter purists have been holding our breath for, for more than a decade…

A sequel to the original Bob Lee Swagger books as good as the originals.

What’s killing me is that I cannot reveal what Ott wrote for another couple of weeks.

Sometimes it is better not to be the volunteer webmaster…

August 26, 2009 in: -> One Response so far

Stephen Hunter emailed me his synopsis of I, Sniper tonight. Here it is:

Four famed ’60s radicals are gunned down at long range by a demented sniper. The victims include the movie-star ex-wife of media mogul T.T. Constable and a former star couple, now living as academics in Chicago. Under enormous pressure, the FBI quickly concludes that the shooter has to be the Marine war hero Carl Hitchcock, whose 93 kills were thought for a time to lead the bodycount tally among American marksman in Vietnam.

But as the Bureau, led by Special Agent Nick Memphis, head of Task Force Sniper, close in, Hitchcock commits suicide, having reclaimed the title of leading life-taker. Closing out the investigation, Nick discovers a case made in heaven: everything fits, from timeline to ballistics to forensics to motive, means and opportunity. But Nick thinks maybe it’s a little too good.

He asks his friend, the retired Marine sniper Bob Lee Swagger, to check the data. And thus, reluctantly, the old shooter begins to re-evaluate what the other investigators have assembled, calling on a lifetime of firefights as well as a special, intuitive gift for understanding the dynamics of close quarters combat. Swagger knows what goes down when the lead is in the air, how humans do and don’t behave, what the limits are, how well or how poorly men shoot for blood.

Using a skillset no man on earth posses except himself, he soon uncovers unseen anomolies, implausible causalities, misleading interpretations and gradually begins to unpeel a sophisticated conspiracy which would require the highest warcraft of the most superb special operations professionals. His discoveries propel him forward, even when the Bureau itself is unsure. And at the same time, extraordinary pressures are applied to Nick to declare the case closed, so the four martyrs to peace can be laid to rest with dignity, without vulgar, sensationalistic exploiters raking in money on the tragedy. The two narratives play off each other: Bob penetrates the deepest secrets of the sniper world and its new technology, while Nick tries to stand firm in his quest for the truth even as his own agency turns against him in a national capital sick with intrigue and treachery and hardball PR initiatives, and an enflamed media calls for his discharge.

Soon enough, the conflicts cease to be intellectual and turn mortal. The closer Swagger gets, the more interested parties wish to see him stopped. Lead flies, and Hunter’s reputation as one of the finest writers of action is displayed in a series of set-piece encounters with heavily armed men who make the mistake of thinking they are hunting Bob, when he is hunting them.

“I, Sniper” will satisfy Hunter’s thousands of fans and win him thousands of new ones, as it combines brilliant plotting, vivid characters, razor-sharp dialogue and extraordinary gunfights. And when Bob and the last of his antagonists finally face each other in a venue both unanticipated and yet completely appropriate, re-enacting a classic ritual of arms, readers will realize that in certain circumstances, there’s nothing more necessary than a good man with a gun and the guts to use it hard and well.

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