Hot Springs

After ready most of Earl and Bob Lee stories such as "Pale Horse Coming", "Dirty White Boys" (I loved) etc etc I found "Hot Springs and "Havana" alittle too heavy for my liking.

This is the latest in what we might call Hunter's "Swagger Saga," one of several of his works that features members of the Swagger of Arkansas family. Here, Earl returns home at the end of WWII to get his Medal of Honor, and is drawn into a plan to "clean up" the crime-ridden town of Hot Springs. Earl and a select group of young recruits enter into a violent, bloody battle with organized crime, while Earl's wife is slowly coming to term(s)with her new baby and with Earl. Hunter incorporates "real" history into the novel: there was corruption in post-war Hot Springs, and an attempt to clean it up; characters like Bugsy Siegel (a main player) and Mickey Rooney appear, and the arcania (Hunter especially likes firearms) sounds authentic. So far so good. A lively thriller. But it's far better than that. Hunter writes superbly; one of his paragraphs is so much better than anything, say Parker or Cornwell, can write it's a joke that these two are more popular. Hunter's minor characters are wonderfully sketched; the period comes to life. My comparison to Galsworthy is intentional. Here is the new American South after WWII, the race problem, the concepts of culture, language distinctions, the idea of class, are all rendered. There are only an handful of writers of "mysteries" who are working at this level. James Lee Burke is one; James Crumley was another when he was writing; Michael Connelly until his last 2 books. Hunter is another, among the best. And this book is also among the best--around lately.

Whew - another great book from Stephen Hunter. Earl Swagger is an interesting character. This is of course, a prequel to the "Bob the Nailer" books which have come before - Dirty White Boys, Time to Hunt, etc. They are excellent. Of course, you have to be ready to read and imagine quite a bit of violence, but it works in these books. Go ahead, read this one first, and then go and find the ones that came before. Now, is the story of Earl's father to come later? Sounds like a good idea to me.

A rollicking read from the prolific Stephen Hunter, worth the price of admission for pages 72-74 alone when protagonist, and WWII Medal of Honor winner, Earl Swagger, has a defining exchange with famed 40's gangster Ben "Bugsy" Siegel in the Hot Springs, Ark. train station. Despite some midstream red herrings pointing to a formulaic, and disappointing, ending, the actual ending is wonderfully formulaic if you just plain like this kind of novel. Most satisfying read of its genre this Summer.

Ok, I admit initially I was disappointed that this was not a Bob Lee Swagger book. But this is probably better than most of the Bob "the Nailer" books, with the possible exception of Point of Impact. I am not easily impressed, but this book blew me away.At times, this book has a little bit different feel about it than some of his other books, definitely very gritty... very Phillip Marlowe. Hunter obviously did a lot of research to get the setting to feel just right.As always, Mr. Hunter manages to throw in plenty of curves and unexpected plot twists. He manages to keep surprising me, and exceeds my expectations for creativity in providing clever, yet plausible outcomes to the sticky situations that Earl finds himself in.It is the characters in this book that carry my interest. Earl Swagger is certainly a VERY different man in this book than he was in Black Light. In Black Light, Earl has it all together. In Hot Springs, Earl is much younger, and much more at war with himself. We finally get to meet and learn all about the enigmatic Frenchy Short, mentioned in so many other of Hunter's novels. Owney Maddox is a ruthless but believable villain, and his henchmen are brutal and dangerous as well. Stephen Hunter is very good at touching a realistic emotional chord, something which most of the writers of this genre don't do very well at all, if they even try.Like most of the Hunter Books I have read (with the exception of his one miserable book, the Spanish Gambit), I could definitely see this one as a great movie. Hunter tends to focus on much smaller plots than someone like Tom Clancy does, in a much more realistic and personal scale, but this doesn't mean they are any less dramatic or exciting. This book is certainly no exception, and I would recommend it heartily. I don't understand why more people haven't heard about Stephen Hunter yet, but I think it is only a matter of time.

Stephen Hunter is simply a spectacular story teller. This is the latest in the Swagger saga and could be considered the prequel. "Hot Springs" presents the back story of Earl Swagger (Bob Lee a.k.a. "Bob the Nailer's" father.)Earl returns from the Pacific campaign a Medal of Honor winner...a true hero. He is tapped to ramrod a strike force whose agenda is to put an end to the illicit activities so pervasive in Hot Springs, mostly controlled by Owney Maddox. The head of the strike force has grand polical ambitions, so Earl's enemies and allies both work against him.Mr. Hunter brings the likes of Harry Truman, Bugsy Siegel, Virginia Hill, Mickey Rooney and Alan Ladd in for cameo appearances and sets the 1946 scene to perfection in many subtle ways.The book moves at warp speed. You are compelled to turn pages in an attempt to keep up with the action.The story is presented from the minds of four or five main characters in alternating chapters so when you want to learn the outcome of one situation you must enjoy three or four more chapters to get that particular resolution. Like eating peanuts, you cannot read just one chapter.Mr. Hunter delivers a nonstop action read laced with taut suspense and peopled with rich, well defined characters. No one (heroes especially) is perfect and this novel is hard boiled noir at its very best.