Sniper's Honor (Bob Lee Swagger) Mass Market Paperback – December 30, 2014

The story did affect me deeply. Well done! And it created echoes; I will explain those echoes in a moment. I spent many years as a Russian Area 'expert' in the USAF and with an 'alphabet agency.' I have had exposure to both Red Army and White Army viewpoints in the many instructors over the years. Die Weisse Hexe has an attitude and commitment I found uncommonly often in the Russian war vets. But she is obviously a far cut above in skill (let's square THAT) and in executing her chosen/assigned army duties...as a SOLDIER, as she reflected in the limo ride early on. The echo I note comes from the absolute futility of the effort, the system she was embedded in, and the horrendous occasion of that immense clash of arms; I say that now because Die Hexe haunts me as if she were as real as the lines on those wonderful pages, and there WERE such legendary snipers. As there clearly were those such as Lara. Pasternak's story of Lara in his Dr. Zhivago is a most profound character to me, accepting and expressing the vastness and futility of the horrid matrix in which she found herself embedded, but eventually (in a very real way) prevailed - lived - loved. To accurately quote her fate I will source it. Classic: "One day Larisa Fyodorovna left the house and did not come back again. Evidently she was arrested on the street in those days or died or vanished no one knew where, forgotten under some nameless number on subsequently lost lists, in one of the countless general or women’s concentration camps in the north." - [...]. Die Hexe occupies the same vast playing field and the profoundly hopeless result of perfect execution of her role, but like a gnat in the overall landscape, still a profound character, human and dedicated actions, showing deep presence and purpose (in this case impacting Der Fuhrer) standing taller than the sky as what had to be done in the scheme of things inexorably wound down to that improbable and heroic trigger squeeze. Well done, Stephen Hunter (and Bob Lee), well done. (I would leave this part out if ever used - mak'em work for the moment:) In finding how the splendid Ludmilli Petrova (I prefer Mili), or rather Hunter, answered my pleadings at the at the end; Hunter sort of filled that hole in my soul left by Lara. I began to hope and pray she would survive as early as mid-book, but could not, WOULD not look ahead, and was rewarded with a choked up moment, just as I had hoped. I wished for Lara at least the fate of Pasternak's mistress and 'Lara' muse, Olga Ivinskaya, who did live, and love, and suffer. I believe them both to be real: Lara and Mili - for what is actually fiction when we write of such scope, tragedy, and living in such roles in an endless landscape of wasted lives, and youth, and loves, and bloodied life purpose itself? The fiction inevitable must echo truths, and the truths move us. It takes a splendid and gifted novelist to 'take us there,' one the many 'there's' that clearly must have BEEN a true story in such a millions-casted, killed, and forgotten reality; Hunter did that. Bravo! Bravo!

What happens to some authors that they become so arrogant and so indolent that they insult readers by writing rubbish filled with factual errors, not to mention imaginative black holes.How dumb does Hunter think we are, as dumb as him? Among the most glaring factual errors:---the Balfour Declaration was issued in 1917, not 1919, as the author would have it.---Hitler described Arabs and Palestinians as 'subhuman', according to Speer. It is utterly unbelievable that top SS officers would therefore treat Salid as a social equal under any circumstances---Hunter is so stupid and racially insensitive that he describes Salid as an 'Arab', when in fact he is Palestinian, a person of another race entirely---Hunter reveals himself to be an ignorant pleb where wine is concerned, while attempting to show off his knowledge. He tells us Salid is an exceptional wine expert, and then has this so-called expert open his evening with a peaty and strong Islay malt whisky. As everyone knows, this would destroy any palate and make tasting of a fine wine impossible.---Nothing is stupider than the title, an oxymoron. Even Swagger himself reflects on how there can be NO ‘honor’ in hiding in the bushes and murdering unseeing men. A sniper, by definition, is a bushwhacker and a coward, according to traditions of combat dating back to the Greeks, if not earlier.But the author clearly has his own twisted definition of the word ‘honor’. At one point in the book he actually refers to ‘journalist’s honor’.----And Hunter clearly knows nothing of being a working journalist, certainly not a foreign correspondent.One does not expect total realism in cheap fiction, but it is stretching credulity for the female Washington Post reporter to just abandon her job and run around with Bob, especially since she notes that her reporter husband does not have time for such indulgences. Foreign correspondents, in fact, work every day.----Hunter's age perhaps excuses his ignorance of the internet. But it is irritating that he pretends to know things we don't.The software he mentions, Cain & Abel does exist and in fact is free to download from a dozen software sites. So why does the author tell us it is only available on the ‘Dark Net’? That’s like telling us you have to be a Mossad agent to be able to use Microsoft Word.---Geography bewilders Hunter, or else he just doesn't care enough to know what country his character is in. He writes: ‘They walked to the car nonchalantly in the quiet Russian night.’Duh. The chapter heading says that they are in Kolomiya, and that is not in Russia. It is in Ukraine.---Maybe his publishers cannot afford a proofreader, or maybe Hunter really does not understand the difference in English usage of 'like' and 'as'

With The 3rd Bullet, Stephen Hunter reclaimed some of the earlier mojo that had been missing from the past few installations of the Bob Lee swagger series. Sadly, Sniper's Honor loses some of that momentum. Hunter has always been at his best in recreating historical scenarios many years in the past, whether a Mississippi prison camp in Pale Horse Coming, or Batista era Cuba in Havana, or his mesmerizing JFK assassination plot in The Third Bullet. This time around-no dice. Hunter sets up a fascinating scenario-a Nazi spy in the highest ranks of Stalin's Kremlin-then uses him as a simple plot device to introduce a one note main character, Mili Petrova, the Wiessen Hexe, or White Witch, the sniper hero of the Eastern Front. Shooting-oh, there is a bit, but noting of the intricacy or expertise that Hunter usually brings to his plotlines, whether for Bob the Nailer-who appears as a shallower character in this book than any other in the series, or the WWII Sniper Mili Petrova. Events move quickly, and one is entertained, especially by the sideplot involving the Mossad, but overall the book feels rushed, as if Hunter did not spend the time building up the villainous backstory or the lure to bring Bob the Nailer back into action as he usually does. I was disappointed by this installation of the series, and hope Hunter develops a stronger backstory in his next work, which, as always, I will still eagerly await.