My friend Stephen Hunter is one of my favorite authors. My two favorite novels of his are \u201cDirty White Boys\u201d and \u201cPale Horse Coming.\u201d Well, let me introduce you to \u201cGreat Read Coming\u201d: Steve\u2019s newest book, \u201cTargeted,\u201d becomes available this coming January 18, and is available on pre-order now: about $29 in hardcover and $15 on Kindle.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cTargeted\u201d is the latest in his Bob Lee Swagger series, featuring a Vietnam era sniper who is now past retirement age but still getting involved in adventures which require his core skills. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Steve\u2019s books are best-sellers across the spectrum of readership, but particularly popular among us gun people. He is One Of Us, a serious shooter, and unlike so many other fiction writers he gets the gun stuff \u2013 and the fighting stuff \u2013 right.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Stephen Hunter also has a sense of humor about as dry as James Bond\u2019s martini. In \u201cPale Horse Coming,\u201d he made characters out of the great gun writers past, gathered for adventurous rescue. He knew those guys well enough to amplify their character traits just enough to give a laugh here and there while still remaining true to their legacies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
There is a touch of that in the new \u201cTargeted.\u201d Recovering from wounds received in a heroic gun duel with a jihadist sniper in his last outing, Swagger becomes the target of certain politicians who want to make anti-gun statements by getting him sent to prison. (Torn from today\u2019s headlines, ya think?) You\u2019ll recognize some of those politicians despite their fictitious names, and Hunter satirizes them mercilessly without doing so grotesquely.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I won\u2019t spoil it for you by divulging the plot. I will <\/em>tell you that he introduces a new character I expect to see resurface in his future novels. This dude is the personification of \u201ctacticool,\u201d with the right exotic guns and gear, Tier One skills, and split times between pistol shots that are downright preternatural.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Like all Stephen Hunter novels, this one is a great ride and a fun read. If you are a gun geezer like me, you\u2019ll root for the protagonist with his aches, pains, hip replacements and general \u201cget off my lawn\u201d geezertude.<\/p>\n\n\n\n If you already like Stephen Hunter\u2019s work, you\u2019ll like \u201cTargeted.\u201d If you haven\u2019t seen his prior novels but enjoy this blog, well, I\u2019m guessing you\u2019ll still <\/em>like \u201cTargeted.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" My friend Stephen Hunter is one of my favorite authors. My two favorite novels of his are \u201cDirty White Boys\u201d and \u201cPale Horse Coming.\u201d Well, let me introduce you to \u201cGreat Read Coming\u201d: Steve\u2019s newest book, \u201cTargeted,\u201d becomes available this coming January 18, and is available on pre-order now: about $29 in hardcover and $15 on Kindle. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":7060,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-7059","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-uncategorized"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/MassadAyoob\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7059","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/MassadAyoob\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/MassadAyoob\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/MassadAyoob\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/MassadAyoob\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7059"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/MassadAyoob\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7059\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7061,"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/MassadAyoob\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7059\/revisions\/7061"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/MassadAyoob\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7060"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/MassadAyoob\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7059"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/MassadAyoob\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7059"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/MassadAyoob\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7059"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}