Now and then the major had to sideline the jeep as a column of Shermans ground along the road, pulling up a coughing fit’s worth of dust as well as releasing spumes of octane consumption and more noise than could be easily borne. They sounded like radiators clattering down a marble staircase.

If you’re my friend on Facebook, you may have noticed a couple “woe is me” posts from me in the last couple days. Those posts have provoked a couple very nice comments on my books, which I appreciate a lot.

But when I read a Stephen Hunter novel, I feel myself larval and unformed. This guy knows how to tell a story.

The Bullet Garden is his latest, and it’s an Earl Swagger book, about the father of Hunter’s regular hero. It’s been a while since he did an Earl Swagger book, and I remember thinking, when I read the last one, that there were signs he might enjoy those stories even more than the Bob Lee ones.

In the somewhat flexible chronology of Earl Swagger’s life, this book comes after his adventures on Tarawa in the South Pacific. In the European theater, the D-Day invasion has occurred, but the advancing Allies are bogged down in the “bocage,” the famous hedgerows of Normandy. One of their worst headaches is a company of ranging enemy snipers who consistently attack American patrols, picking off their officers just at sunrise or sunset, when most men can’t see well, and leaving the troops in panic.

Allied command wants the best sniper in the American military to come and figure out a way to kill these killers. So the summons goes to Sgt. Earl Swagger of the US Marines, who’s training leathernecks at Parris Island just now. The assignment goes with a brevet rank of Major in the US Army (!). Earl agrees to go – it could be interesting.

The story will take us to SHAEF headquarters in London – hopelessly politicized and riddled with spies. We meet Earl’s chief assistant, Lt. Leets (a character from a previous story, and, even better, a Minnesotan!), and Basil St. Florian, hero of Basil’s War. There’s Leets’ gorgeous sweetheart, a secretary at SHAEF, who has to deal with unwanted advances from a corrupt officer. There’s Archer and Goldberg, a couple hapless dogface draftees who turn into unlikely heroes. And there’s also the mysterious sniper, a man with a strange history and stranger motives.

You’ll encounter a lot of name-dropping in this book, especially of the literary kind. Very few names are given, but they’re all easily recognizable; some are delightful surprises. The villain of the story (the physical villain; there’s a strategic villain too) is disguised by a minor name change, but should be fairly easy to identify, at least at one remove (contact me if you have trouble).

But it’s the sheer, masterful storytelling that amazed me. The plot is complex, but as smoothly and efficiently assembled as the lock of a custom hunting rifle. I cared about the characters and my interest never flagged for a moment.

I have only a few quibbles, which seem to be editing problems. The author loses track of a female character’s hair color at one point, and seems to get confused about the mechanics of driving on the left side of the road at another.

But all in all, The Bullet Garden is a tour de force of thriller writing. Highly recommended. Cautions for language and adult topics.