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Stephen Hunter continues to delight<\/strong> 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\u2019s no formula at work here \u2013 but the formula is in the characters, not the plots. Hunter loves to surprise his readers with fresh situations. He\u2019s put Bob Lee into NASCAR races, samurai sword fights, and terrorism scares. In The Third Bullet<\/a><\/i> 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<\/i>.<\/p>\n 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<\/i> who shows up to get his hero out of a tough situation, but in a real writer\u2019s way. Hunter paints himself, under a pseudonym, as a semi-comic hack with a drinking problem \u2013 he\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n As a result of the writer\u2019s 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\u2019s a dramatic \u2013 and revelatory \u2013 final showdown.<\/p>\n I can\u2019t say much about the theory author Hunter proposes here. It\u2019s not entirely clear how seriously we\u2019re meant to take it \u2013 this is fiction, after all. To me it seemed, at least, to raise interesting possibilities.<\/p>\n I\u2019ve never been a Kennedy conspiracy aficionado. I know a man who is, and I\u2019ve never argued it with him, because a) I haven\u2019t studied it closely, and b) this guy is a veteran sniper himself, someone who looks at the problem from a shooter\u2019s point of view.<\/p>\n Which is precisely what The Third Bullet<\/i> does.<\/p>\n Recommended. Minor cautions for language, violence, and adult themes. 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\u2019s no formula at work here \u2013 but the formula is in the characters, not the plots. Hunter loves to surprise his readers with fresh situations. … Continue reading The Third Bullet, by Stephen Hunter<\/span>
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