Before author Max Allan Collins hit the big time with his Joe Heller novels and The Road to Perdition, he wrote several novels about an Iowa mystery writer with a sideline in real-life sleuthing, called Mallory (no first name; his friends call him Mal). Judging by A Shroud for Aquarius, Collins was already at that point an excellent writer.

Mallory is called in by the county sheriff to view the scene of the violent death of Ginnie Mullens. Ginnie was Mal’s oldest friend (never a lover). Though estranged in high school, after which Ginnie became a hippie and got into the drug world, they’ve kept in touch, and Mal has always intended to try to mend fences. He never quite got around to it.

The scene looks like a suicide by handgun, but the sheriff isn’t sure. Ginnie is known to have had dangerous connections, and he suspects foul play. There’s also a double indemnity insurance angle. Mal, partly from feelings of guilt, agrees to look into it. Danger, ugly revelations, and a new love await him on his quest.

One thing that’s especially interesting about this book, written in the ʼ80s, is that today’s reader has to view it through a double lens of history. A Shroud for Aquarius is largely a meditation on the aftereffects – which Mal sees as mainly bad – of ʼ60s counterculture.

But for the reader in the 2010s, the ʼ80s setting is in itself a distant mirror, and it’s hard not to think that the hippies won after all, considering that we have an acolyte of Bill Ayers in the White House right now.

Which is a melancholy thought, at least for me.

But the book is good, and is recommended. The usual mild cautions for language and themes apply.

Stephen Hunter continues to delight with his bestselling thrillers, centered on veteran Marine sniper Bob Lee Swagger and members of his family. It would be an exaggeration to say there’s no formula at work here – but the formula is in the characters, not the plots. Hunter loves to surprise his readers with fresh situations. He’s put Bob Lee into NASCAR races, samurai sword fights, and terrorism scares. In The Third Bullet he uses the thriller format to examine the assassination of President John F. Kennedy in 1963, something that was hinted at, but not developed, in the first BLS novel, Point of Impact.

The first neat trick here is that Hunter inserts himself into the story. Not in the Clive Cussler manner, portraying himself as a suave and admirable deus ex machina who shows up to get his hero out of a tough situation, but in a real writer’s way. Hunter paints himself, under a pseudonym, as a semi-comic hack with a drinking problem – he’s recognizable through his career arc and book titles. His character plays an initializing role at the start of the book, and then exits. Which is precisely the way to handle it.

As a result of the writer’s experience, old Bob Lee Swagger is enticed out of retirement by a woman who asks him to examine a new theory about the Kennedy assassination. And Bob Lee agrees, for reasons he keeps to himself until the end. On the way there are murders and close calls, and a dangerous trip to Moscow. Bob Lee comes up against a criminal mastermind to beat all criminal masterminds, and there’s a dramatic – and revelatory – final showdown.

I can’t say much about the theory author Hunter proposes here. It’s not entirely clear how seriously we’re meant to take it – this is fiction, after all. To me it seemed, at least, to raise interesting possibilities.

I’ve never been a Kennedy conspiracy aficionado. I know a man who is, and I’ve never argued it with him, because a) I haven’t studied it closely, and b) this guy is a veteran sniper himself, someone who looks at the problem from a shooter’s point of view.

Which is precisely what The Third Bullet does.

Recommended. Minor cautions for language, violence, and adult themes.