There are various ways for authors to handle the problem of aging in popular series characters. Some characters never age at all. Rex Stout’s Nero Wolfe and Archie Goodwin were unaffected by the passage of decades. John D. MacDonald, as I recall, allowed his hero Travis McGee to age about one year for every three in real time. This lent an illusion of realism, while extending McGee’s effective life as an action hero as long as the author was likely to live. Perhaps the bravest course is to just let nature take its course.

That’s what Stephen Hunter is doing in his Bob Lee Swagger novels. Old Bob Lee, decorated Vietnam War Marine sniper, is getting long in the tooth. He’s moving slow, and feeling his aches and pains (especially the ones from his multiple wounds) pretty badly.

So Hunter has apparently decided to take the series in a new direction. And I salute him for it. In Dead Zero he’s produced an exciting and compelling action novel in which Bob Lee acts as the shrewd old detective, reader of human “landscape,” and spotter, but another, younger sniper has come on board to do the running and crawling and shooting.

The new sniper is Ray Cruz, a Marine we first meet as he’s traversing some rough country in Afghanistan, posing as a goat herder, on his way to assassinate a warlord known as “The Beheader.” His mission is frustrated, and he is thought dead.

Then the situation changes. “The Beheader” changes sides and declares himself America’s ally. He’s invited to Washington DC to accept a medal, and he is expected to announce his candidacy for the presidency of Afghanistan on that occasion.

And suddenly Ray Cruz is back, off the grid, but he lets the authorities know that he intends to finish his original mission.

Who else should FBI Assistant Director Nick Memphis call to help out with this problem than his old buddy Bob Lee Swagger? Swagger agrees to help, not because he cares about “The Beheader,” but because he wants to save the sniper. And so the race begins. A team of elite mercenaries are after Ray Cruz too, and they are in the pay of a high level traitor with the power, and the will, to destroy America itself.

I highly approve of the way Stephen Hunter is handling this series, and look forward to more. I figured out one surprise twist ahead of time, because I’ve figured out a little about how Hunter thinks, but there were plenty of others. A particular treat was the side-plot of three Jihadi terrorists taking a road trip across America to carry out a suicide bombing, bickering with one another while enjoying American ice cream.

Highly recommended, with cautions for language and violence.