Dead Zero

Starred review from November 29, 2010
Several months after the betrayal of a covert operation in Afghanistan leaves a Marine sniper team dead, the target of that mission, top Taliban commander Ibrahim Zarzi (aka "the Beheader"), changes sides, in bestseller Hunter's stellar seventh Bob Lee Swagger thriller (after I, Sniper). Zarzi travels to the U.S., where he meets the president and key congressional leaders and offers the State Department its best chance at achieving a stable, reliable Afghan government. Meanwhile, a Marine radio operator receives a message from Gunnery Sgt. Ray Cruz (aka "the Cruise Missile"), one of the snipers believed to have been killed. Cruz has returned stateside to continue the mission. The FBI calls in retired Marine sniper ace Bob Lee Swagger to help find Cruz before he blows off the Beheader's head, but someone is following "Bob the Nailer" to get to Cruz first. Solid characterization complements the tight, fast-moving plot.

December 15, 2010

In Hunter's latest (I, Sniper, 2009, etc.), Bob Lee Swagger stalks Bob Lee Swagger. Well, just about,

If anyone could be more valorous, more skilled and resourceful, more uncompromisingly upright, and at the same time more downright deadly than Bob Lee Swagger, it would have to be Gunnery Sergeant Ray Cruz. As it is, the men are mirror images of each other, both U.S. Marine templates—super snipers, hands that have never known a tremor, iron-nerved and killer-eyed. When they meet it almost goes without saying that they will admire and respect each other enormously, but it's a meeting that will happen under desperate circumstances. Cruz has had a task assigned to him that Swagger is charged with interrupting at all costs. Cruz, nicknamed "the Cruz Missile" to suggest his devotion to getting the job done, has been ordered to take out a certain Ibrahim Zarzi, nicknamed "the Beheader," for reasons that have made him hated and feared up and down the Afghanistan-Pakistan border. Suddenly, however, Zarzi seems to undergo an epiphany, which transforms him from a malodorous jihadist into a sweet-smelling American asset, a sea change with an obvious effect on Cruz's mission. Except that Cruz, who has suffered and survived much during his pursuit of the Beheader, doesn't buy the varnished version and refuses to back off. Nothing to be done, then, it's decided in the inscrutable, impenetrable corridors of power, but to haul the 64-year-old Swagger out of retirement and set a super sniper to catch a super sniper. And so the intricate, interchanging game of predator to prey and prey to predator is lethally afoot.

A premise that had a chance to be compelling is diffused by a momentum-killing willingness to digress. Hunter has done much better.

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Starred review from December 1, 2010
The idea that Stephen Hunter could write a Bob Lee Swagger novel in which the legendary Vietnam sniper doesnt pull a single trigger seems inconceivable. Not that there isnt plenty of trigger-pulling by others in this tale of a contemporary marine sniper gone rogue. Swagger, now in his 60s, is drafted by the FBI to find Sergeant Roy Cruz, who was presumed dead after his attempted assassination of an Afghan warlord went awry. The warlord has now changed sides and is being groomed as our man in Kabul, but the resurfaced Cruz isnt buying the conversion and appears determined to finish his original mission. Swagger, charged with stopping any attempt on the Afghan leaders life, soon finds himself sympathizing with his fellow sniper and convinced that CIA generals are behind a secret program to ramp up the war on terror. Its a juicy premise, which Hunter admits adapting from Patrick Alexanders 1977 Death of a Thin-Skinned Animal; transformed to a contemporary setting, it evokes the government-treachery themes of 24 but does so with less cartoony derring-do and a considerably more nuanced exploration of the psychology of the soldier. Only the revelation of a connection between Swagger and Cruz seems a bit artificial, but this is a top-notch thriller all the same, showing that Bob the Nailer is just as (well, almost as) compelling a hero without his guns. HIGH-DEMAND BACKSTORY: I, Sniper, Hunters previous Swagger novel (85,000 hardcovers in print), remained on the New York Times best-seller list longer than any of his previous novels, and this one will ride the same wave.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2010, American Library Association.)