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Thrillers, Character Types - Fiction
Time to Hunt (Bob Lee Swagger Series #3) by Stephen Hunter — book cover

Time to Hunt (Bob Lee Swagger Series #3)

by Stephen Hunter, Maccambridge
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Overview

He is the most dangerous man alive.  He only wants to live in peace with his family, and forget the war that nearly killed him...

It's not going to happen.

Stephen Hunter's epic national bestsellers, Point of Impact and Black Light, introduced millions of readers to Bob Lee Swagger, called "Bob the Nailer," a heroic but flawed Vietnam War veteran forced twice to use his skills as a master sniper to defend his life and his honor.  Now, in his grandest, most intensely thrilling adventure yet, Bob the Nailer must face his deadliest foe from Vietnam—and his own demons—to save his wife and daughter.

During the latter days of the Vietnam War, deep in-country, a young idealistic Marine named Donny Fenn was cut down by a sniper's bullet as he set out on patrol with Swagger, who himself received a grievous wound.  Years later Swagger married Donny's widow, Julie, and together they raise their daughter, Nikki, on a ranch in the isolated Sawtooth Mountains in Idaho.  Although he struggles with the painful legacy of Vietnam, Swagger's greatest wish—to leave his violent past behind and live quietly with his family—seems to have come true.

Then one idyllic day, a man, a woman, and a girl set out from the ranch on horseback.  High on a ridge above a mountain pass, a thousand yards distant, a calm, cold-eyed shooter, one of the world's greatest marksmen, peers through a telescopic sight at the three approaching figures.

Out of his tortured past, a mortal enemy has once again found Bob the Nailer.  Time to Hunt proves anew why so many consider Stephen Hunter to be our best living thriller writer.  With a plot that sweeps from the killing fields of Vietnam to the corridors of power in Washington to the shadowy plots of the new world order, Hunter delivers all the complex, stay-up-all-night action his fans demand in a masterful tale of family heartbreak and international intrigue—and shows why, for Bob Lee Swagger, it's once again time to hunt.

Synopsis

He is the most dangerous man alive.  He only wants to live in peace with his family, and forget the war that nearly killed him...

It's not going to happen.

Stephen Hunter's epic national bestsellers, Point of Impact and Black Light, introduced millions of readers to Bob Lee Swagger, called "Bob the Nailer," a heroic but flawed Vietnam War veteran forced twice to use his skills as a master sniper to defend his life and his honor.  Now, in his grandest, most intensely thrilling adventure yet, Bob the Nailer must face his deadliest foe from Vietnam—and his own demons—to save his wife and daughter.

During the latter days of the Vietnam War, deep in-country, a young idealistic Marine named Donny Fenn was cut down by a sniper's bullet as he set out on patrol with Swagger, who himself received a grievous wound.  Years later Swagger married Donny's widow, Julie, and together they raise their daughter, Nikki, on a ranch in the isolated Sawtooth Mountains in Idaho.  Although he struggles with the painful legacy of Vietnam, Swagger's greatest wish—to leave his violent past behind and live quietly with his family—seems to have come true.

Then one idyllic day, a man, a woman, and a girl set out from the ranch on horseback.  High on a ridge above a mountain pass, a thousand yards distant, a calm, cold-eyed shooter, one of the world's greatest marksmen, peers through a telescopic sight at the three approaching figures.

Out of his tortured past, a mortal enemy has once again found Bob the Nailer.  Time to Hunt proves anew why so many consider Stephen Hunter to be our best living thriller writer.  With a plot that sweeps from the killing fields of Vietnam to the corridors of power in Washington to the shadowy plots of the new world order, Hunter delivers all the complex, stay-up-all-night action his fans demand in a masterful tale of family heartbreak and international intrigue—and shows why, for Bob Lee Swagger, it's once again time to hunt.

Houston Chronicle

Hunter is a superb writer...Time to Hunt is one of his best.

About the Author, Stephen Hunter

Stephen Hunter has written 16 novels. The retired chief film critic for The Washington Post, where he won the 2003 Pulitzer Prize for Distinguished Criticism, he has also published two collections of film criticism and a nonfiction work, American Gunfight. He lives in Baltimore, Maryland.

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Editorials

Esquire

A head rush of a thriller.

Dallas Morning News

Thrillerdom's equivalent of From Here to Eternity...an utterly irresistible saga.

Chicago Tribune

Some of the fiercest and most compelling fiction on the shelves...Hunter is a master at creating large, sweeping plots.

Houston Chronicle

Hunter is a superb writer...Time to Hunt is one of his best.

Library Journal

When a sniper shoots a man in the mountains of Idaho and wounds the woman who is with him, it is not an isolated incident but the deliberate culmination of events that began during the Vietnam War. Bob Lee Swagger, who was a Marine sniper in Vietnam known as "Bob for the Nailer" for his lethal shooting, at first believes that he was the gunman's intended target. The wounded woman is his wife and the widow of his wartime comrade, Donny Fenn. Donny had been killed by a Russian sniper assigned the task of neutralizing Bob, or so Bob had always believed. But now it seems possible that Donny might have been the main target all those years ago and that it is Donny's widow that the sniper has come to kill, not Bob. Both a gripping war novel and a complex thriller coiled around the convoluted intrigues of the supposedly concluded Cold War, this is page-turning entertainment that will delight action adventure readers. -- Charles Michaud, Turner Free Lib., Randolph, MA

Kirkus Reviews

Bob Lee Swagger, master sniper, returns (Black Light, 1996; Point of Impact, 1993), which means testosterone at the boil, gore galore, and filled-up body bags row on row. A super-sniper (not the illustrious Swagger but his nemesis Solaratov) shakes off the Arizona morning chill, hunkers over (for those who care) a "Remington 700, with H-S Precision fiberglass stock and Leupold 10X scope," and seconds later a "man's chest explodes" (snipers in this novel miss maybe once a decade). Flash back, then, to 1965. The war in Vietnam is winding down and, tragically, a young marine, Swagger's partner, is blown away the day before he would have finished his tour. Are the two super-sniper incidents connected? Though for years Swagger has believed that the bullet that killed his friend was meant for him, events in the present prove him wrong. Unwillingly, then, he has to face the terrible fact that the death of his friend in 1965 was just the first act in a violent melodrama that now threatens his wife who was once married to his long-dead comrade. The answer behind the decades-old conspiracy is as convoluted as it is nefarious, involving chicanery in the corridors of power. Swagger, however, has little time to fritter away on inductive reasoning, since it's time to hunt for that enemy sniper and take him out before harm can come to the innocent and helpless. "You're a sacred killer," an admirer tells Swagger. "Every society needs one." Whether that's true or not, the stage is set for a grim denouement, and Swagger drops from a helicopter—demigod ex machina—to frustrate evil. Hunter's prose doesn't get much above pedestrian, and the dialogue is particularly weak. But Swaggerin battle—brandishing his wondrous rifle, Excalibur with a trigger—will hold most and enthrall some.

Book Details

Published
April 1, 1999
Publisher
Random House Publishing Group
Pages
608
Format
Mass Market Paperback
ISBN
9780440226451

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