Stephen Hunter - Dead Zero

The idea that Stephen Hunter could write a Bob Lee Swagger novel in which the legendary Vietnam sniper doesn’t pull a single trigger seems inconceivable. Not that there isn’t plenty of trigger-pulling by others in this tale of a contemporary marine sniper gone rogue. Swagger, now in his 60s, is drafted by the FBI to find Sergeant Roy Cruz, who was presumed dead after his attempted assassination of an Afghan warlord went awry. The warlord has now changed sides and is being groomed as “our man in Kabul,” but the resurfaced Cruz isn’t buying the conversion and appears determined to finish his original mission. Swagger, charged with stopping any attempt on the Afghan leader’s life, soon finds himself sympathizing with his fellow sniper and convinced that CIA generals are behind a secret program to ramp up the war on terror. It’s a juicy premise, which Hunter admits adapting from Patrick Alexander’s 1977 Death of a Thin-Skinned Animal; transformed to a contemporary setting, it evokes the government-treachery themes of 24 but does so with less cartoony derring-do and a considerably more nuanced exploration of the psychology of the soldier. Only the revelation of a connection between Swagger and Cruz seems a bit artificial, but this is a top-notch thriller all the same, showing that Bob the Nailer is just as (well, almost as) compelling a hero without his guns.