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Rating:  -
Haven't read Stephen Hunter before so I didn't start this book with any pre-conceived ideas but I found the novel pretty good.
Earl Swagger is a mans man. War hero, tough guy. Full of inner demons and maybe a death wish.
Set in 1946, Swagger is the leader of a group of covert law enforcement officers intent on cleaning up the town of Hot Springs from casinos.
The novel deals with the characters, the time and the place very well.
Recommended.
Rating: -
Earl Swagger, US Marine, comes home from World War II with a Medal of Honor and a shattered soul. His wife June can't reach him. His nightmares are getting worse and worse. Just as he's on the edge of suicide, a lawman approaches him with a unique deal -- organize a secret band of "enforcers" to run the mob out of Hot Springs, Arkansas.
This book has more action, more gunfights, more fistfights, more local color, more historical tidbits, and more fascinating characters than any other Swagger novel. It's a definite classic. There are some flaws that I noticed after rerearding it two or three times, however.
Why is Earl's wife June such a simpering little twit?
If Earl is such a "real man" sexually, why does he avoid his wife's touch like the touch of death?
If Benny Siegel is such a no good creep, why does he have a strong, brave, smart girlfriend like Virginia Hill? The two of them are both sexier than Earl and weepy little June.
How come every Italian, Jew, and Irish mobster is a no good little yellow rat, while every southern man is a paragon of honor, chivalry and courage? The book would have been much stronger if Earl had shown more respect for the Marines from other parts of the country he must have served with in World War II. Stephen Hunter's southern-man worship gets really tired after a while. But nevertheless, HOT SPRINGS is a classic.
Rating: -
This book is what the term page-turner was coined for. I can be a little jaded and sometimes it's hard to find a book I really enjoy. I have always loved Stephen Hunter's books, especially Dirty White Boys, but this is the best so far. I haven't read Pale Horse Coming or Havana yet. I love the setting, its a great noir setting but not really noir. This is a straight old fashioned tale of good guys and villians. Earl Swagger is a straight shooting hero with a clear cut sense of right and wrong. He deals with his demons with the 45's blazing. And that happens quite often. I was a little worried at the beginning. It looked like it was going to be a story about a tormented G.I. doing soul searching and fighting with himself. There's a little of that but it definitely isn't one of those books.
The action is fast and well paced. Stephen Hunter has always been able to write a riveting action scene and this is some of his best. The descriptions are crisp and direct without a lot of superfluous prose. There is a lot of originality in the fight scenes. There is a kind of over the top clichéd stand-off toward the end of the book but even that is gratifying.
Character wise it's kind of a mixed bag. The main characters and a few of the secondary ones are well defined. Stephen doesn't have the gift of characterization of Elmore Leonard but that isn't really an insult. Some of the secondary charcters are a little two dimensional and you don't really get emotionally invested. The heroes are heroic and the villians are sufficently villianous without being stereotypical.
The story has some great twists that keep you reading. There were times where I couldn't stop reading at the end of a chapter. I had to keep going to find out what would happen next. I loved the way the author worked in the real life Bugsy Seigel and his life and death into the book.
Hot Springs is a crime novel that's a thrilling cut above.
Rating: -
Hot Springs
This is a very good book by a talented author. Much of it is pure page-turner, and plotholes are kept to a minimum. Rare!!
However, like so many novels now, "Hot Springs" could have benefited greatly from some editorial assistance in tightening the narrative. Why do authors think that writing well is the only requirement? In this book we get well-written side-trips that take forever to advance some aspect of the plot that could have been handled in a flashback, or some other way.
As a matter of fact, the ENTIRE subject of Earl's father and brother is unnecessary to the main story, but is dragged through it like a ball and chain.
Overall, I'm very glad I found it and will look for more Hunter. I only wish he would stick more to the action that he's so good at, and indulge much less in psychological journeys, character-building etc. etc.
Rating:  -
Loosely based on an actual historical event, when returning World War II vets decided to clean up the corrupt cesspool that was Hot Springs, Arkansas, Stephen Hunter freely admits that he has taken great liberties with history. But when there is a conflict between a cool plot twist and history, as Hunter declares, the former will always win. He is a storyteller first, last, and always.
Hunter is a good storyteller partly because he spends considerable time researching his details in order to get things right, and make his stories plausible. Good fiction must be plausible. In this effort he has done his usual fine job, using books and experts to make certain that his details fall together on such things as the firearms he introduces (the Thompson submachine gun, for example, as well as combat enhanced .45 model 1911A1 Colt government model, and other weapons). He names some of his resources in the Acknowledgement chaper of the book.
One place where he apparently lacked adequate research though, was in describing a sailboat, where, no doubt he thought he could "wing it" with what knowledge he thought he had. Such tiny details trip up many an author who tries to spin a yarn about something he has no knowledge of, making a fine writer and careful researcher like Hunter stand out from the rest. And, he certainly does.
The detail? A "sheet" is not a sail. It is a rope. Some insist on calling it a "line." Its purpose is to control a sail.
Hunter uses the word to indicate the number of sails the boat will spread. He might better have indicated them by name, for presumably the boat was speading its jib, main, and mizzen, assuming that it was a ketch or yawl (not clarified). And, Stephen, there is no "twenty-two bells." On a 24 hour clock, 2200 is ten PM. There are only eight bells, which are sounded, incrementally, a half-hour apart, and then at the sounding of eight bells, it begins again with one bell.
Hunter apparently, judging from the speeches he puts in his protagonists mouth, doesn't like swabbies, and this is swabby language. But, remember this, The Marine Corps is part of the Navy, and any boot Marine should know the significance of the bell system of watch-keeping.
But, like Ruash Limbaugh would say, "Just kidding! Just Kidding!"
Stephen Hunter writes a helluva book, even if, as I suspect, he is really a bleeding heart liberal Democrat. He's currently my favorite fiction writer.
Joseph (Joe) Pierre, USN (Ret)
author of Handguns and Freedom...their care and maintenance
and other books
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