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Summary
Summary
This collection of three interconnected novellas follows each generation of the iconic Swagger family-- grandfather Charles, father Earl, and fan favorite hero Bob Lee--from New York Times bestselling author, Pulitzer Prize winner, and "true master at the pinnacle of his craft" (Jack Carr, #1 New York Times bestselling author) Stephen Hunter. In The Night Train , Charles Swagger is on the hunt for notorious bank robber Baby Face Nelson when he traces a tip to the Chicago stock yards. While there, he's brutally assaulted and discovers that the madman who attacked him is involved in a nearby narcotics ring with plans to spread its new drug to the residents of the disenfranchised 7th District of Chicago. Worse, this is no ordinary drug--it makes some users happy, drives others insane, and kills many of the rest. Will Charles be able to stop the ring before it's too late? Or is he in over his head among the dark streets of Chicago? Earl Swagger investigates a violent bank robbery in Johnny Tuesday that left two dead and a fortune missing in small-town Maryland. At every turn, however, he's met with silence and hostility from the townsfolk, which makes sense when he uncovers municipal corruption, working-class exploitation, gang politics, jaded aristocrats, scheming gamblers, a hitman, a femme fatale. And a whole bunch of men with guns. Luckily, Earl has brought his own guns in this unputdownable noir mystery. Finally, in Five Dolls for the Gut Hook , a thirty-two-year-old Bob Lee Swagger is back from Vietnam nearly broken over good men lost for nothing. He's turned hard down that whiskey road to hell. But one afternoon he's wakened from his nightmares by two men with a problem. As nearby Hot Springs tries to retool its image from gambling paradise to family resort, a butcher has begun to prey on the city's young women, a figure straight out of a horror movie. Hot Springs Homicide is baffled. "I'm a sniper," says Bob, "not a detective." "But," comes the reply, "you are the son and grandson of two of the greatest detectives this state has ever produced." On that premise alone, Bob takes up the hunt for a killer who not only kills but desecrates. Using his sniper's mind, Swagger is able to see things others have missed, drawing ever closer to a showdown. But equally, we understand, Bob Lee Swagger is hunting his own salvation.
Author Notes
Stephen Hunter was born on March 25, 1946, in Kansas City, Missouri. He received a bachelor's degree in journalism from Northwestern University in 1968. He spent two years in the United States Army as a ceremonial soldier in Washington, D.C., and later wrote for a military paper, the Pentagon News. In 1971, he joined The Baltimore Sun as a copy editor and he became its film critic in 1982. He won the American Society of Newspaper Editors Distinguished Writing Award in the criticism category in 1998 and the Pulitzer Prize for Criticism in 2003.
He is the author of several books including The Master Sniper, The Second Saladin, Dirty White Boys, and Soft Target. He is also the author of the Bob Lee Swagger series and the Earl Swagger series. He has written non-fiction books including Violent Screen: A Critic's 13 Years on the Front Lines of Movie Mayhem, American Gunfight, and Now Playing at the Valencia.
(Bowker Author Biography)
Reviews (1)
Publisher's Weekly Review
The excellent latest from Pulitzer winner Hunter (Basil's War) showcases three generations of the crime-fighting Swagger family in stylistically diverse tales of violence and corruption. In "City of Meat"--an exercise in social realism that recalls Upton Sinclair--Charles Swagger, the federal agent who shot John Dillinger, investigates a narcotics ring being run out of the Chicago Union Stock Yards in 1934, whose latest product could prove disastrous. "Johnny Tuesday" is a hyperviolent, noir-tinged shoot-'em-up in which Charles's son, Earl, probes an unsolved bank robbery in 1947 Chesterfield, Md. The collection concludes with "Five Dolls for the Gut Hook," an homage to the "giallo" Italian slasher films of the 1970s that finds Earl's son, Bob Lee Swagger, accepting an assignment from an Arkansas police department to investigate a series of brutal murders. Existing fans will be delighted by the amount of character development and action Hunter packs into these novellas, while new readers will find them a perfect entry point into the Swagger universe. Hunter is at the top of his game. Agent: Esther Newberg, CAA. (Jan.)
Excerpts
Excerpts
TK Excerpted from Front Sight: Three Swagger Novellas by Stephen Hunter All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.