You know that game you can play where "The Karate Kid" becomes a lot funnier if you just imagine that Mr. Miyagi is stoned the whole time?
You don't? WYou know that game you can play where "The Karate Kid" becomes a lot funnier if you just imagine that Mr. Miyagi is stoned the whole time?
You don't? Well, now you do.
Anyway, I've devised my own little game, and I play it every time I read a Lee Child thriller. I imagine that his hero, Jack Reacher, has Asperger's Syndrome.
Before any of you "psychologists" out there jump all over me -- no, all the pieces don't fit -- but his obsessive tendencies, his refusal to own any possessions, his rootlessness, and the amount of time he lavishes on noticing small, precise, exact details add up to someone who is very, very different from most everyone else on planet earth.
I'm actually not a big fan of DSM classifications, so maybe diagnosing Jack Reacher on the autism scale is a waste of time. Still, his brain does work in a strange and particular way. When someone pulls a gun on him, the reader is not only going to find out that it's a Ruger Speed-Six .357 Magnum, but also that the .357 Magnum was invented in 1935, and that "magnum" is Latin for "big." When Jack Reacher is riding a subway car, he's not only going to describe the size of the car, the other passengers, and the sounds of the train going through the tunnels and the brakes screeching, he's also going to let the reader know that he's on car number 7622, which is an R142A model, which is the newest on the MTA transit system, and that it was built in Kobe, Japan, by Kawasaki. He's also going to assign his fellow passengers numbers and spend an inordinate amount of time describing to the reader exactly where they are sitting in relation to him.
In fact, Reacher spends so much time over the course of the first several chapters describing his exact surroundings on the subway (where he thinks he's spotted a female suicide bomber) that I was surprised when things came to a hasty conclusion and he was off on adventures through New York City and down the eastern seaboard to Washington, D.C.
I actually think Lee Child's thrillers work best when he embraces the fact that his protagonist is somewhat odd (although I'm not sure he realizes just how odd he is). They don't work so well when he spends time trying to build romantic relationships for Reacher (as in Tripwire) because they're never believable. At least in Gone Tomorrow, the only sex scene is mercifully brief and in keeping with his character. ("It was all good. Then we passed some kind of a threshold and got into it harder. A short minute later we were completely out of control." Done.)
Of all the Jack Reacher thrillers I've read so far, I'd classify them as either "not so good" or "pretty good," and this one falls firmly in the region of "pretty good." It frequently approaches "damned good," but not quite often enough for me to bump my rating up from three stars to four stars.
Oh, and in my last review of a Reacher thriller -- 61 Hours, the book published right after this one -- I was left with a single burning question. Does the homeless Jack Reacher ever brush his teeth? Well, Gone Tomorrow finally answered my question. Several times in the book he mentions the folding toothbrush he carries with him everywhere. So I can cross that off my list of burning questions....more
Ulu Beg, a Kurdish freedom fighter betrayed by the CIA, sneaks over the Mexico/U.S. border with a Russian-made Skorpion machine pistol. He intends to Ulu Beg, a Kurdish freedom fighter betrayed by the CIA, sneaks over the Mexico/U.S. border with a Russian-made Skorpion machine pistol. He intends to kill former Secretary of State Joseph Danzig, the most thinly veiled version of Henry Kissinger I've seen in a novel.
As soon as the CIA gets wind of Ulu Beg's presence in the U.S. they pull Paul Chardy out of retirement. Chardy is a cowboy from the bad old days of the Agency who fought alongside Ulu Beg against the Soviets, but betrayed him and his Kurdish freedom fighters after being captured and tortured for six days by the Soviets.
Stephen Hunter is one of my favorite thriller writers. He's probably best known for his novels about Bob Lee Swagger, a former Marine sniper and Vietnam vet. The Second Saladin (1982) is his second published novel, and I thought it was great. Very well-written, with excellent characters. Ulu Beg is not the villain of the novel, even though he is the antagonist, and he and Chardy are both tragic figures. I have enjoyed every one of Hunter's novels that I've read so far, but I think he sometimes fetishizes dumb hillbillies too much. Paul Chardy is a much more thoughtful and interesting character than Bob Lee Swagger or Lamar Pye (from Dirty White Boys), and it's clear that Hunter had lofty literary ambitions when he wrote this, which isn't always apparent in his later novels. (There are frequent references to Jorge Luis Borges and other high-minded authors in The Second Saladin.)
The Second Saladin isn't as action-packed as most of Hunter's later novels, but it's well-paced and suspenseful, and the characters are all believable....more
In the second book of Don Pendleton's long-running "Executioner" series, entitled "Death Squad," Mack Bolan enlisted the help of ten of his old VietnaIn the second book of Don Pendleton's long-running "Executioner" series, entitled "Death Squad," Mack Bolan enlisted the help of ten of his old Vietnam War buddies to help him take down a Mafia family in California. More than ten years later, after Pendleton had stopped writing the series and ghostwriters had taken over, the only two surviving characters from Bolan's death squad, Herman "Gadgets" Schwarz and Rosario "Politician" Blancanales, were teamed up with another character from "The Executioner #2: Death Squad" -- Carl Lyons, the LAPD detective who pursued Bolan -- for this spin-off series. All three characters are Vietnam veterans, and as "Able Team," they function as an invisible arm of the N.S.A. Or something.
"Tower of Terror" is a book so unsubtle that Lyons, "Pol," and "Gadgets" are code-named "Hardman One," "Hardman Two," and "Hardman Three" during their mission to rescue hostages in a high-rise office building in Lower Manhattan.
L.R. Payne (writing under the house name "Dick Stivers") crafted an entertaining, quick read here. There's wall-to-wall action, which is sometimes ridiculous, but it all moves at a nice clip. The bloody finale on the helipad of the tower was especially well-done.
I needed something quick to read on the subway, and this book definitely fit the bill....more
After reading 61 Hours, I'm left with one burning question. Does Jack Reacher ever brush his teeth?
Lee Child goes into a lot of detail about how his hAfter reading 61 Hours, I'm left with one burning question. Does Jack Reacher ever brush his teeth?
Lee Child goes into a lot of detail about how his hulking protagonist drifts around the United States with literally no possessions -- not even a backpack -- and how he buys a new set of clothes every week and throws away the old set. But does he ever brush his teeth? Does he bathe? Does he shave? If he doesn't shave, does he have a beard? He's not described with one.
If Child were more vague about Reacher's life on the road, I'd never even consider these things, but he goes into such detail about Reacher's clothing-buying habits that he creates a whole new set of questions.
He goes into detail about a lot of things. Sometimes he's almost like someone with Asperger's Syndrome. He describes tire ruts in snowy, icy roads so often in this novel that it's nearly fetishistic.
61 Hours has a built-in stopwatch. As Jack Reacher attempts to protect the life of an elderly woman who is to testify against a drug gang, everything leads toward some nebulous event that is going to occur 61 hours after a bus crash lands him in the small town of Bolton, South Dakota, in the middle of subzero weather and a snowstorm. Many chapters end with the line, "Five minutes to xx in the morning. Xx hours to go."
61 Hours starts out strong, but nearly three days is a long time to keep your audience engaged, and too much of the middle three-fifths of this book feels like padding.
The last 50 pages are pretty good, but not spectacular. Jack Reacher is a two-dimensional good guy facing a one-dimensional bad guy, so this book never involved me enough to feel as if I couldn't wait to finish it.
I like a lot of Child's attitude and his way with a thriller, but so far for me his series hasn't met the expectations set by all the raves from his rabid fans....more
This is the first book in Donald Hamilton's Matt Helm series that I've read, and I don't think it'll be the last.
In this, the sixth in the series, AmeThis is the first book in Donald Hamilton's Matt Helm series that I've read, and I don't think it'll be the last.
In this, the sixth in the series, American agent, assassin, and World War II veteran Helm is sent to the fictional Latin American nation of Costa Verde to kill a rebel leader from 350 yards away with a .30-06 rifle. During the course of his mission he discovers three things in Costa Verde that will propel the rest of the narrative; a scar-faced Nazi war criminal named Heinrich von Sachs, an American agent named Sheila who was sent on the same assassination mission as Helm but who was captured, starved, and tortured (rape is implied but never directly stated), and a Soviet-made ICBM that went missing after the Cuban Missile Crisis.
The Matt Helm series seems like a direct response to Ian Fleming's James Bond series. Like Bond, Helm is tough, cold, irresistible to women, and has a sentimental streak that he rarely allows to interfere with the completion of his objectives.
This novel and several others in the series were made into films in the '60s starring Dean Martin as Helm. I haven't seen any of them, but I get the feeling they were lighthearted spy-movie spoofs along the lines of "Our Man Flint." (For instance, in the film version of this novel, the ICBM is changed to a flying saucer.) While Helm's first-person narration is frequently wry and ironic, it's never satirical. "The Ambushers" is a tough-minded little thriller that is closer in tone to the violent action movies Rod Taylor starred in during the late '60s and early '70s like "The Mercenaries" than it is the James Bond films....more
This isn't a review, because I just started reading this book, but I couldn't help sharing my irritation.
I like Lee Child's storytelling skills, and JThis isn't a review, because I just started reading this book, but I couldn't help sharing my irritation.
I like Lee Child's storytelling skills, and Jack Reacher is a fun character to read about.
Unfortunately, his prose is like fingernails on a chalkboard. Most irritating of all, it's not irredeemably bad, it just needs a good editor. Who is Lee Child's editor? Does he even have one?
For instance:
"Are you Jack Reacher?" the guy asked for the third time. Reacher set his bottle on the table and shook his head. "No," he lied.
We, the readers, are fully aware this man is Reacher, because we've been told so at least a dozen times in the past three pages. "He lied" is unnecessary and stupid. It would have had more impact had Child simply written "No," he said."
"Who wants him?" Reacher asked. "My client," Costello said. "Lady called Mrs. Jacob." Reacher sipped water. The name meant nothing to him. Jacob? Never heard of any such person.
The line "Jacob? Never heard of any such person," should be deleted from the page, burned, and flushed down the toilet.
A few pages later, Reacher enjoys a "steak that hung off both sides of the plate at once."
Is there any way for a steak to hang off both sides of a plate not at once? Are these two, irritating little words there to ensure we know that this isn't one of those steaks that hangs off both sides of the plate, but not at the same time, because it has legs and walks back and forth?
I could go on and on, but I won't. Tough guy characters need tough-guy prose. To properly craft terse, tough-guy prose, Child needs a good editor. He doesn't have one.
--update--
OK, I finished. Of the first three novels about Jack Reacher, this was far and away my least favorite. Besides the poorly edited, hackneyed prose, the story takes forever to get going. The first two Reacher books both have slam-bang openings that carry the reader through some of the more boring bits, but this one doesn't, which makes all the repeated verbs and interminably long descriptions of people doing things harder to get through. The first 200 pages could have been edited down to 75, and pages 200-400 could have been edited down to 100. The climactic 150 pages are pretty good, but it takes too long to get there. The first two Reacher books weren't great, but they weren't boring. Unfortunately this one is. It could have been a tight 325-page thriller, but it's a bloated 550-page snoozer. Comparisons to Hammett and Chandler are way off. If anything, Lee Child is a higher quality Don Pendleton....more
R.T.M Scott's second Spider pulp novel has a less madcap plot than his first, but it's just as good. In The Wheel of Death, Richard Wentworth (the "SpR.T.M Scott's second Spider pulp novel has a less madcap plot than his first, but it's just as good. In The Wheel of Death, Richard Wentworth (the "Spider") goes undercover as a hood and meets a young woman whose father is slated to be executed, but who is--of course--innocent of the crime. Wentworth discovers a nightclub and casino that is only open to New York's wealthy and powerful, and which is run by a criminal mastermind intent on taking over political power in the city through intimidation and blackmail. Would it be a spoiler to say that he saves the day?...more
I enjoyed Die Trying, Lee Child's second Jack Reacher novel, a lot more than his first, Killing Floor. The switch from first-person narration to thirdI enjoyed Die Trying, Lee Child's second Jack Reacher novel, a lot more than his first, Killing Floor. The switch from first-person narration to third-person narration helped a lot. The bigger, tougher, and more taciturn a character is, the more important it is not to have him narrate his own story. (Can you imagine The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly with constant voice-over narration by Clint Eastwood explaining what his character is thinking and feeling?)
In this novel, Reacher is still drifting around the United States after spending most of his adult life as a military policeman. He is in the wrong place at the wrong time and ends up getting kidnapped by a few crazed Montana militiamen (remember, this book was published in 1998) along with a female F.B.I. agent, and they're whisked off together to the militia's compound.
Die Trying moves at a brisk pace, and it's a satisfying beach read (or Greyhound bus read, in my case). The writing isn't great (Child's copy editor really should have raised a red flag about the overuse of the verb "shrug") but the story is entertaining, and Reacher is a pretty good character. I will almost certainly read more of Child's books....more
I recently saw the 1932 film version of this story, and I really enjoyed it. Leslie Banks, who plays Zaroff, the eccentric Russian gentleman who huntsI recently saw the 1932 film version of this story, and I really enjoyed it. Leslie Banks, who plays Zaroff, the eccentric Russian gentleman who hunts humans for sport on his own private island, gives a wonderfully hammy performance, Fay Wray is gorgeous, and Joel McCrea is a total stud. It was great, so I thought I'd check out the story it was based on.
Richard Connell's "The Most Dangerous Game" is a great read. It actually has fewer characters than the movie, and moves more quickly. It's one of those stories with such a great premise that most people know what it's about whether or not they've read it, and have very likely seen at least one film or episode of a TV show inspired by it. Connell easily could have drawn out his story, but he keeps it lean and mean. It's a very suspenseful, involving story, and, while timeless, is clearly a product of the post-Great War "lost generation." The protagonist, Sanger Rainsford, is horrified by General Zaroff's pursuits, to which Zaroff responds, "One does not expect nowadays to find a young man of the educated class, even in America, with such a naive, and, if I may say so, mid-Victorian point of view. It's like finding a snuffbox in a limousine." This conversation between Zaroff is a bit like some of the humanism vs. natural selection debates the two main characters in Jack London's The Sea Wolf have, only distilled down to a couple of paragraphs, and followed by a totally awesome fight to the death....more
Norvell Page gets a lot of praise from fans of "The Spider," since he wrote the majority of the books in the series and maintained a fairly consistentNorvell Page gets a lot of praise from fans of "The Spider," since he wrote the majority of the books in the series and maintained a fairly consistent level of quality, but after reading the first Spider novel, I have to give a lot of credit to R.T.M. Scott. He set the tone of the series perfectly, creating a swashbuckling gentleman criminologist vigilante hero named Richard Wentworth and setting him loose in a wild plot that includes a mass poisoning attempt, a masked master-criminal who is just as much a master of disguise as Wentworth, and a treacherous femme fatale, as well as the cast of characters who surround Wentworth, Nita van Sloan, the woman who loves him, Stanley Kirkpatrick, the New York police commissioner, and Ram Singh, Wentworth's faithful Hindu servant.
A great start to the series, and an utterly enjoyable Depression-era pulp novel....more
Here's a passage from this book that, in a nutshell, is everything I love about The Spider series, as well as everything that makes it sublimely ridicHere's a passage from this book that, in a nutshell, is everything I love about The Spider series, as well as everything that makes it sublimely ridiculous:
"Good God!" the man screeched beside him. "You killed him."
"Certainly," Wentworth said. "This boat was wrecked on purpose. The crew are murderers, the same ones who sank the other boats. Any man in a lifebelt that works is a murderer."
"Do you mean it?" the man gasped. "Who are you?"
"The police," snapped Wentworth. "Do you want a gun?"
For a moment the man was silent while panic swirled past, then he cursed roughly. "Do I want a gun? I'll kill every damned sailor I see!"
Wentworth gave the man two guns and ammunition. "If you find another man who feels the way you do, let him have the second gun," he ordered.
I should point out, for those of you who are unfamiliar with the series, that Richard Wentworth is not a police officer. He's just your run-of-the-mill Depression-era millionaire playboy who fights crime on the side and has a secret identity. Consequently, in a few short lines, he not only illegally impersonates a police officer, he deputizes a complete stranger, gives him a loaded weapon to kill with, and another loaded weapon to pass out as he sees fit.
Mayhem. Absolute mayhem. And a heck of a lot of fun....more
Chris Kalb, who runs the excellent Web site , said that if he were pitching The Spider franchise in Hollywood, he might say, "He's aChris Kalb, who runs the excellent Web site , said that if he were pitching The Spider franchise in Hollywood, he might say, "He's a superhero. Trapped in a horror film. Directed by John Woo." After reading The City Destroyer, I think that's a great description. The Spider is a contemporary of iconic '30s pulp superheroes and vigilantes like Doc Savage and The Shadow, there are a lot of macabre undertones and a pervading sense of doom, and the frequent gunplay defies both logic and physics.
If I were specifically pitching The City Destroyer to Hollywood, I'd say, "Richard Wentworth, a.k.a. 'The Spider,' is a 1930s version of Jack Bauer from 24, except that he operates independently and is also a master of disguise." The villain in The City Destroyer, "The Master," has created a "steel eater" that can bring down even the mightiest skyscraper, as well as ocean liners, trains, automobiles, firearms, and bank vaults. This novel takes place in New York, and a lot of scenes are difficult to read in the 21st century without thinking back to September 11, 2001. The Master's gangland cronies use the steel eater to collapse not only the "Sky Building" (a thinly disguised Empire State Building), but also the "Plymouth Building" (the Chrysler Building), Grand Central Station, and the Brooklyn Bridge. (Those last two apparently didn't need pseudonyms.) Needless to say, The Spider goes after The Master with the kind of ruthless determination any pulp superhero would when faced with villainy that thinks nothing of murdering thousands to make a profit.
Norvell Page, who wrote more Spider novels than anyone else did under the name "Grant Stockbridge," is a master of action and atmosphere, if not internal consistency. This is hack and slash, penny-a-word writing, but it's consistently fun and action-packed....more
After Pinnacle Books published four of Eric Helm's Scorpion Squad novels in 1984 and 1985, Gold Eagle (a.k.a. Harlequin for Hairy-Chested Macho Men) aAfter Pinnacle Books published four of Eric Helm's Scorpion Squad novels in 1984 and 1985, Gold Eagle (a.k.a. Harlequin for Hairy-Chested Macho Men) acquired the series and renamed it "Vietnam: Ground Zero."
This is the first book of the revamped series (and the first I've read), and I was happy that Gold Eagle's editors didn't seem to tamper in any way with the world that Helm had already created in The Scorpion Squad. The characters are all the same, US Army Special Forces Camp A-555 is still located in the "Parrot's Beak" region of the Mekong Delta, and the writing is still muscular and precise.
Vietnam: Ground Zero continues the story of Master Sgt. Anthony Fetterman's vendetta against a shadowy Chinese commander whom he believes is training and instructing the Vietcong just over the border in Cambodia. With the tacit agreement of a single CIA operative in Saigon, Capt. Mack Gerber gives Fetterman permission to slip over the border to assassinate the Chinese officer. Needless to say, things don't go entirely according to plan, and once back in Vietnam, things go from bad to worse, with the CIA disowning the operation, which leads to a military court martial. (Reading this book after the 2004 presidential election, it's hard not to think of the "swift boating" of John Kerry, and the controversy surrounding statements he made about being in Cambodia during Christmas 1968, but that's neither here nor there.)
The back cover copy of all the books in the Vietnam: Ground Zero series claim that "Eric Helm is the pen name of two Vietnam veterans, men who were there and who now tell it like it was." Actually, my understanding has always been that Helm is a pen name for pretty much just one person; Kevin Randle. I think Bob Cornett, his writing partner, only collaborated on two books with Randle during his run at Gold Eagle. Anyway, assuming this copy is true, I have no idea what Randle actually did in Vietnam, or how long he served there, but he certainly spins a good yarn....more
Lee Child's Killing Floor took me a really long time to read, mostly because it just never captured my interest. Child is an incredibly popular thrillLee Child's Killing Floor took me a really long time to read, mostly because it just never captured my interest. Child is an incredibly popular thriller writer, so I'm sure there are a lot of readers who've consumed this entire book in two or three sittings. I am not one of them, however. I read a few pages at a time, on my way to or from work, and never found myself wanting to tear through it, the way I do when a thriller really captures my interest.
Killing Floor opens well, with Jack Reacher, a big, tough, 36-year-old ex-military policeman who is now drifting around the country, eating breakfast in a diner in a small town in Georgia. With no explanation, police officers storm the diner and arrest Reacher. This is a great opening, but the momentum just didn't continue for me. I was pretty much just reading to get to the end.
I think my biggest problem was the character of Reacher. Creating a protagonist who's ridiculously tough is always tricky. It's easy to devolve into parody, and it's hard to make him believable. Reacher, for the most part, is believable, but there are too many points in the book where he overexplains himself, which didn't work for me. For instance, as he's approaching one of his antagonists during a brutal fight, there's suddenly a long paragraph explaining how, in a book or movie, he would have squared off against him, man to man, but since this is real life, he's just going to go for the kill right away. Not only does this stop the action dead in its tracks, but it reminded me that I was reading a book, and that Reacher is a fictional character. Maybe it was supposed to be hard-boiled, but for me, it was just the opposite. What would have been really cool was if Reacher had just gone ahead and iced the dude without any preamble. Maybe Child didn't trust his readers to see how hardcore the action was, but if a writer has to explain something like that, it never works. It's called "showing" versus "telling." If Child can't just show the reader how tough Reacher is, then he's failed.
I didn't hate Killing Floor, and I may read more of Child's books, but while reading it I just kept thinking that I would probably be enjoying it more if it were a two-hour movie starring Stone Cold Steve Austin than a 400-page novel with hackneyed writing. And that's not really how I want to feel when reading a hard-boiled thriller....more
Hot Springs is Stephen Hunter's first novel devoted entirely to his character Earl Swagger, the father of Bob Lee Swagger, the former Marine gunnery sHot Springs is Stephen Hunter's first novel devoted entirely to his character Earl Swagger, the father of Bob Lee Swagger, the former Marine gunnery sergeant and sniper who served in Vietnam, and whose exploits were previously detailed in Time to Hunt, Point of Impact, and Black Light. Earl Swagger was introduced in Black Light, which had parallel narratives, one about Bob Lee in the present day and the other about Earl in the '50s. I liked Earl as a character in Black Light. He seemed simultaneously more likeable than Bob Lee and more flawed.
Hot Springs takes place nearly a decade before Earl Swagger's scenes in Black Light did, a year after World War II. Swagger is haunted by the horrors of the Battle of Iwo Jima, but at the same time he seems unwilling to settle down and try to build a life for himself and his pregnant wife. Instead of taking on relatively safe work and taking care of his family, Swagger agrees to train a group of young men to kick down doors and raid casinos and brothels in the town of Hot Springs, Arkansas. Not only does Swagger lead these raids instead of staying in the rear and acting as an advisor, he does so without the bulletproof vests he makes his boys wear. He denies having a death wish, or any kind of guilt about surviving Iwo Jima when so many of his men did not, but the evidence seems to imply otherwise.
I liked Hot Springs, but I didn't feel as if it delved enough into Swagger's character. Hunter seems more interested in playing around with introducing as many real, historical figures as he can. (Harry S. Truman is in the first chapter, pinning a medal on Swagger's chest, Benjamin "Bugsy" Siegel is a major character, Mickey Rooney shows up at one point, shooting craps in one of Hot Springs's casinos, etc.) All these little details are fun, but add little to the main narrative thrust, at least in my opinion, and I found them more distracting than anything else. Also, the basic arc of the narrative seemed overly similar to the arcs in Hunter's novels about Bob Lee. And a number of elements seemed really similar to elements in the Bob Lee novels. For instance, in one of the climactic shootouts, I found myself thinking, "Really, Mr. Hunter? Tracer rounds, again?"
Overall, though, I did like Hot Springs, and would recommend it to anyone who likes Hunter's novels, but not necessarily to someone who said to me, "I've never read any of Stephen Hunter's novels. Which one do you think is the best?"...more
Another excellent entry in the Scorpion Squad/Vietnam: Ground Zero series. Some parts read more like an after-action report than they do a novel, but Another excellent entry in the Scorpion Squad/Vietnam: Ground Zero series. Some parts read more like an after-action report than they do a novel, but overall it's involving and well-written. There's a new character in River Raid who joins the Special Forces A-team at Camp A-555, who very well might be a vampire, and who's killed at the end by a Vietcong booby trap; a wooden crossbow bolt through the heart. So that was weird....more
Another solid entry. This series keeps getting better. The action in Chopper Command is more realistic than in either of the two previous novels. AlsoAnother solid entry. This series keeps getting better. The action in Chopper Command is more realistic than in either of the two previous novels. Also, more attention is paid to the political situation on the ground, as opposed to the first two Scorpion Squad novels, which inserted action at every possible occasion, sometimes to the detriment of the overall story....more
Probably my favorite out of the first three Bob Lee Swagger books that Stephen Hunter wrote. The plot is more satisfying than the plot of Black LightProbably my favorite out of the first three Bob Lee Swagger books that Stephen Hunter wrote. The plot is more satisfying than the plot of Black Light and the characters more three-dimensional than they were in Point of Impact. If you were going to pick just one of the Swagger trilogy to read, I'd recommend this one, especially if you like military fiction (about half of Time to Hunt takes place in Vietnam in 1972; the other half takes place in the present day)....more
A solid three stars for this one. I enjoyed The Nhu Ky Sting a lot more than the first book in the series, Body Count. It’s more suspenseful, and the A solid three stars for this one. I enjoyed The Nhu Ky Sting a lot more than the first book in the series, Body Count. It’s more suspenseful, and the story has a more satisfying arc. In this one, Capt. Mack Gerber and his A-team are sent on a secret mission into North Vietnam to extract the pilot of a U-2 spy plane who was shot down and captured by the NVA. The writing in this volume is slightly better than it was in Body Count, but it’s still not great, and there are still bits of action that I find unconscionable in the context of supposedly realistic military fiction (like Capt. Gerber running between two of the enemy and then dropping to one knee so that they shoot each other), but in general the authors keep things relatively plausible. They also seem to be sticking to the historical timeline, and they come up with a relatively clever way to incorporate the 1964 attack on the USS Maddox in the Gulf of Tonkin into the fictional action of the book....more
Loading...
