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. Continue reading Dead Zero, by Stephen Hunter