Game of Snipers

Starred review from May 6, 2019
Early in bestseller Hunter’s stellar 12th Bob Lee Swagger novel (after 2017’s G-Man), a stranger, Janet McDowell, shows up at Bob’s Idaho ranch and asks him for help tracking down the sniper who fatally shot her Marine son, Lance Cpl. Thomas McDowell, in Baghdad in 2003. Janet has spent the past 15 years following the trail of the man she knows killed Tom, a mercenary known as Juba the Sniper. After accepting the mission, Bob consults the Israelis, who tell him that the Syrian-born Juba “is a cold brute, utterly committed and sublimely talented.” After the Mossad learns that Juba is headed for America with plans to shoot a “high value target from a long way away,” Bob goes to the FBI, and a co-FBI/Mossad task force is assembled. A riveting chase ensues in which Juba manages to stay one step ahead of Bob and his team with multiple hairbreadth escapes. Some readers may find the gun lore too intensive, but Hunter can make even a lengthy discourse on a single round of ammunition fascinating. Put this one on the shelf next to The Day of the Jackal. It’s that good. Author tour. Agent: Esther Newberg, Curtis Brown.

May 15, 2019
A storied marksman meets his equal in the 11th installment of Hunter's Bob Lee Swagger series (G-Man, 2017, etc.). Seventy-two-year-old retired sniper Bob Lee Swagger watches the prairie from his rocking chair in Idaho, neither expecting nor wanting to see anyone. But Janet McDowell shows up, saying that her son was shot by a sniper in Baghdad and that she had gone to extraordinary, fruitless trouble trying to exact vengeance on Juba the Sniper, who has killed hundreds of Americans. Swagger agrees to hunt the man down--hey, it'll be more interesting than hanging out at Cracker Barrel. Meanwhile, Juba dreams of killing Marines--"The world was a kill box. His finger spoke for God." Soon Swagger is in Tel Aviv, chatting with the Mossad. They want Juba, too, but they want him alive "to have a series of chats with him." Swagger would like to feed Juba's face to the pigs, but "Alas," he's told, "we're a little Jewish country. No pigs." Scenes with Juba show off his bloodthirsty side--wait, that's his only side, for which he routinely gives thanks. This chap is a fascinating one-dimensional villain, crediting his bloodlust to God. Then U.S. intelligence learns that Juba is coming to America to kill a high-value target from a long-distance shot, so Swagger returns home. There's more than enough detail in this story about hollow point shells, muzzle velocities, and precision kills from over a mile away to make Second Amendment worshipers quiver jellolike with excitement. As the title suggests, Swagger and Juba are inevitably in for a showdown, not a little chat, and it's going to be spectacular. The author is a Pulitzer Prize-winning film critic who knows how to tell a crackling good story. Fast-moving, violent, and entertaining, this is genuine good-guy-versus-bad-guy stuff.

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Starred review from May 1, 2019
Bob Lee Swagger, master sniper, is enjoying retirement on his isolated Idaho ranch, tending his horses, still fiddling with guns and ammo, reading, enjoying his family. Though determined not to be drawn back into the killing game, he succumbs again, swayed as he was in Sniper's Honor (2014) by someone with a very particular wrong that needs righting. This time it's a woman, Janet McDowell, whose son was killed by a sniper in Iraq and who is determined to exact revenge. She has thrown herself into the world of snipers and military intelligence, traveled to the Middle East, been attacked there, but somehow learned the identity of her son's killer: a legendary jihadist called Juba the Sniper. Swagger wants no part of her "revenge safari," but he recognizes, as he tells Janet, "that you have some sand in you, and I respect sand." Bob agrees to put her in touch with a contact in Mossad, the Israeli intelligence service, hoping that will be the end of his involvement. Naturally, it doesn't work that way, as Juba turns out to be in the U.S., preparing for a hit against a seemingly impregnable target. As always, Hunter's knowledge of rifles and ammunition is central to the story, but it's his narrative skill and grasp of character that give this series its reach well beyond "gun nuts": the depth to the supporting characters is particularly notable here, especially Janet and Juba himself, a jihadist who hates America "except for the french fries."(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2019, American Library Association.)