Soft Target

October 31, 2011
Former Marine sniper Ray Cruz, the 42-year-old half-Asian son of Bob Lee Swagger, who was introduced in 2010’s Dead Zero, plays a central role in Hunter’s fast-paced thriller. The Friday after Thanksgiving, terrorists begin their attack on America, the Mall, a huge shopping complex outside Minneapolis, by shooting dead the man playing Santa Claus. The terrorists manage to lock down the mall using sophisticated technology and drive more than 1,000 frenzied shoppers into a central holding area. Among those trapped on upper levels are Cruz and Lavelva Oates, a child care worker. Douglas Obobo, the head of the Minnesota State Police, who was born the “son of a Kenyan graduate student at Harvard and a Radcliffe anthropology major,” wants to avoid violence, while Mike Jefferson, the “rogue state police commander” who leads the SWAT team, pushes an aggressive assault plan. As this straightforward adventure tale builds to its fearsome climax, it’s the actions of Cruz and Oates to thwart the terrorists that captivate.

December 1, 2011
In Hunter's latest, someone shoots Santa Claus and suddenly 1,000 holiday shoppers are converted into hostages. In Bloomington, Minn., Black Friday, the day after Thanksgiving which, for retailers, is both a blessing and a curse, is on the cusp of becoming blood-soaked Friday. With a 4-year-old sitting in his lap, Santa has taken a sniper's bullet and gone to meet his maker. Instantly, America, the Mall, that huge and opulent shoppers' Mecca, turns chaotic. Terrified people race not for bargains but for exits, desperate to escape a follow-up fusillade. Many are fortunate enough to break free. About 1,000, however--mostly women and children--are herded into a central area by gunmen calling themselves the Brigade Mumbai. Heavily armed and avowedly vengeful--the death of Osama besmirches jihadists everywhere--they are as eager for martyrdom as they are for murder. Among the shoppers, albeit reluctantly, is Ray Cruz, a retired marine sniper, son of the iconic marine sniper Bob Lee Swagger, whose valorous exploits Hunter has richly detailed (Dead Zero, 2010, etc.). Sweet-talked by his brand new fiancée, Ray has ventured into mall world as tentatively as if it were an Afghan minefield. But now, circumstances having altered drastically, he's back in his element, undercover and looking for targets. Brigade Mumbai puts forward its demands. The situation intensifies, approaches the tipping point. By this time it's clearly understood by the authorities that they're dealing with a suicide mission and the potential for a horrific massacre. Snipers and SWAT teams gather, but only one man is in an advantageous tactical position, behind enemy lines, as it were. Only one man, but he's Bob Lee Swagger's son, and what a good thing it is that the apple hasn't fallen far from the tree. A too-abundant cast dilutes the protagonist's presence, but the action scenes are well done as usual and the premise chills.

(COPYRIGHT (2011) KIRKUS REVIEWS/NIELSEN BUSINESS MEDIA, INC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.)

July 1, 2011

Fresh from Hunter's last blockbuster, Dead Zero, retired marine sergeant Ray Cruz is shopping at the Mall of America outside Minneapolis when the Mumbai Brigade drops in, intent on killing a lot of Americans in the heartland. As the brigade corners 1000 hostages and starts killing them one by one, Cruz leaps into action. Dead Zero was a hit; this should do well, too.

Copyright 2011 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

Starred review from December 1, 2011
In Dead Zero (2011), Bob Lee Swagger, legendary Vietnam sniper, learned he had a son. Ray Cruz, like his father, is also a marine sniper, also legendary (for his work in Afghanistan and Iraq), also a maverick ( Ideas, abstractions, conceits, causesall were more or less hazy to him ). But doing the job in front of him is anything but hazy to Ray, as it is to his father, and this time that job is a doozy. Out of the military and having hung up his sniper rifle, Ray is doing a little shopping on Black Friday with his fianc'e at America the Mall in rural Minnesota when a gunman kills Santa Claus, and thousands of shoppers are taken hostage in the middle of the ultimate symbol of American consumerism. Terrorists, right? Well, not exactly. The leader of Brigade Mumbai is just a kid who has always liked to wreck things. It's up to Cruz, a human killing machine who finds himself in the wrong place at the right time (but without a gun), to neutralize the assailants before they begin to empty their automatic weaponsand before the headline-hunting bureaucrats from the state police can bungle matters completely. Combining elements of the locked-room mystery, the disaster novel, and the lock-and-load thriller, Hunter produces a remarkably gripping tale, building character (the captives, the bureaucrats, and the terrorists all get compelling backstories) every bit as convincingly as he drives the narrative to its High Noonstyle finale. Put this in the hands of readers who remember Thomas Harris' similar Black Sunday (1975). HIGH-DEMAND BACKSTORY: Hunter has long been a favorite of action fans who like some character-driven texture underpinning the gunplay; this time, the high-concept premise may well widen the appeal by several notches.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2011, American Library Association.)