Pale Horse Coming

Rating:
Summary: One of his best
Review: I read a lot of mystery and thriller novels, and Stephen Hunter is one of my favorites. Why? Because his stories are driven by the plot. His books move. That's one plus. The second: Hunter, as a journalist by trade, doesn't fall back on eye-glazing cliches to convey mood or action: No "pulse-racing" here. So, in addition to fast-moving plots, you know you'll be seeing action in a new light, written in a new way. By avoiding cliches and digging up new metaphors and similes, Hunter gives the reader new images for their heads.
"Pale Horse Coming" is much better than "Hot Springs." The latter was good, but "Pale Horse" keeps the pages turning with a tightly focused plot and some really interesting characters.
I know there's got to be at least one more Earl Swagger book out there.

Rating:
Summary: A thrilling thriller!
Review: Pale Horse Coming is a great Stephen Hunter novel, just like all others in the Swagger series. This one features Earl Swagger, just like his last one, Hot Springs. But Pale Horse Coming is better. From the jacket, you know the general plot of Earl destroying a prison. The first few pages had me hooked as the town and prison of Thebes is established to be an evil, mysterious place, and Earl's friend Sam agrees to go there to find a missing person.

The action picks up when Sam is arrested and Earl goes to find him. The rest of the plot is pretty straight forward without any surprising twists, but that doesn't mean there isn't any suspense. There are a few slow parts in the book, and those include Sam trying to find out the history of Thebes including all of its deep dark secrets. Some of this seems drawn out and predictible, yet not enough to slow the story down. The best parts were the scenes at the prison, where evil truly existed. Those parts made the climax that much greater, when you had a true sense of the evil Earl and his friends were fighting.

Now for a few random thoughts. Stephen Hunter isn't a racist, but in writing a period piece with racism as the primary force of evil, there are parts that are bound to be uncomfortable. So, any black person should be aware of the brutal treatment of the black prisioners and the frequent use of racial slurs. Perhaps the worst part is realizing that attitudes like this did exist, and perhaps still do.

Reading Amazon reviews is the only way I found out that all of the characters on Earl's posse were real-life gunmen. However, the name Audie Ryan did ring a bell. Just like in Hot Springs, Hunter used realife characters. I don't think it detracted from the story, because in this book, I had never heard of them.

In the climactic battle, Hunter writes with the belief that if you are a good gunman, you can defeat several people with your precise shooting alone. I think Hunter gives a good shooter too much credit. Other men with guns would probably get in a few kills now and then.

Finally, this is the fifth book in the Swagger series I believe, and the one that relates best to it is Black Light. In that book, Earl's son Bob Lee tries to figure out the mystery of his father's death. I know Hunter wrote Black Light several years ago. But if I remember right, Earl was killed rather easily considering the mayhem and death he survived in this book and Hot Springs. The Earl Swagger in this book would not have died so easily in Black Light. I may reread Black Light to see if my memory is correct.

I recommend all books in the Swagger series to anyone who enjoys Pale Horse Coming.

Rating:
Summary: A fun entertaining thriller
Review: Earl Swagger and his son Bob Lee are the antiheros of this wonderful series of thrillers by bestselling author, Stephen Hunter. Guns play a major part of his work. They are lovingly described and their use is always necessary to gain the desired result. The books are always thick, yet, the pages fly by so quickly that they read like much shorter books. The writing is always strong and sure and this latest is no exception.
It is 1951 and Earl Swagger is approached by his good friend, Sam Vincent, ex prosecutor of Polk County, Arkansas. Sam accepts a job from a Chicago attorney to locate a black man living in Thebes State Penal Colony in Thebes, Mississippi. The prison is truly Hell on Earth surrounded by swamps and only accessible by a muddy river. The guards are brutal and gain much perverse pleasure in torturing the inmates. Sam just wants Earl to know where he is headed and to investigate his whereabouts if he doesn't return in a certain time. As expected, Sam is not heard from and Earl must start on his perilous journey to rescue his friend.
Stephen Hunter, a film critic for The Washington Post, is an expert on entertainment and uses his expertise when creating his novels. They are among the best thrillers being written today. It is true that the plot can be quite contrived and silly at times, however, they work well. The characters are straight out of the pages of pulp fiction or comic books. The sadistic prison guard, Bigboy, is a pure stereotype. Earl is a superman able to suffer great punishment in just a few minutes than the mere mortal man can endure in a lifetime. Yet, it is fun to root for Earl Swagger to fight and defeat evil wherever he finds it.

Rating:
Summary: Top-notch Hunter
Review: After his good but relatively weak Hot Springs, Stephen Hunter has returned to top form with Pale Horse Coming, the latest in his Swagger series of stories.

Taking place in the South of the early fifties, this story follows Swagger's dealing with the nasty Mississipi village of Thebes, a poor town isolated in a swamp where the residents live as virtual slaves and the local state prison is a hellish place from which few emerge. Swagger, attempting to rescue a friend from this prison winds up in their clutches instead; despite the fact that Swagger is an exceptionally tough guy, Thebes is even tougher.

With the exception of just a couple of the principal heroes, there are few complex characters in here, but Hunter's strengths have always been with action and suspense and this one has tons of it. This is one of Hunter's best, but even if you've never read any of his other stories, if you like this type of book, you will not be disappointed.

Rating:
Summary: Simply outstanding!
Review: Pale Horse Coming is classic Stephen Hunter -- an epic battle of good versus evil, the limits of human endurance, courage under fire, loyalty, and of course, guns. The story centers around two characters from Hunter's previous works -- Sam Vincent, gentleman lawyer, and Earl Swagger, WWII veteran and medal of honor winner. On behalf of a client, Vincent journeys deep into the wilderness of Mississippi to check on the status of a prisoner at Thebes State Prison - the location where the worst of the worst "colored" offenders are sent. Suspecting that he is walking into a dangerous situation, Vincent obtains the word of Swagger that he will come looking for Vincent if he does not return from Mississippi in a pre-specified duration. Of course, Vincent walks into something that is beyond even his worst nightmares, thus engaging Swagger in his pledge to follow Vincent. The story moves well, has lots of action, suspense, and frequent plot twists, while giving the author a forceful understanding of race relations in the deep South during the 1950's. If you have liked Hunter's previous works, you will enjoy this as well. It is a compelling page turner.

Rating:
Summary: Another Good Book by Hunter!
Review: Another really good read by Mr. Hunter, and stonger than Hot Springs. There is no writer quite like Hunter, so it is a pleasure to continue to have him as an author. I've read almost all his books and will continue to read as many more as he wishes to write.

Rating:
Summary: Dy-no-mite
Review: As with all of Stephen Hunter's Swagger books I've read, this was great, great, great, This is certainly not a 'guy' thing. I'll read this book again.

Rating:
Summary: hard to put down..
Review: Well this book was hard for me to put down so much I read it in a day.It was a good story, good guys vs.bad guys. Much like your shoot out at the O.k Coral. I am not from the South the book goes into some details of life in the South. The life of a moral laywer, the war hero, and the uglyness of some good ol' boys. Very good book.

Rating:
Summary: Strong as always
Review: rating: 4.5 stars

With stephen hunter you know two things right off the bat: 1) the story will race along and 2) There will be lots of shooting. This book is no exception.

The plot is mentioned elsewhere so I won't belabor that point. And yes, the dialog at the end seems very 'old south' at times (or what I imagine it to be, being an australian and all)...Apart from that the bok grabs you by throat and doesn't let go. There are no slow patches or boring bits. This is an honest to god page turner (then why four-and half stars? for the dialog at times). And it's meaty enough to last more than a couple of hours.

Of course the main protagonist is the one and only Earl Swagger, and by god he's a man machine in this book. ABsolutely amazing. Poor earl get's himself in some real trouble trying to save his friend, a lawyer, hired to investigate the disapperance of somebody in Thebes, Mississipi...a prison farm of the worst sort (well, so he thinks anyway). Earl has to be the toughest he as ever been to survive this.

Without giving the story away let's just say that there are layers of plot of here, that are well developed, clever and lend the end a more poignant bang, than is typical. This story is quite satisifying just for the plot alone, without the action on top (that's just like chocolate syrup on the ice cream!).

So if you like Hunter, you like plot and characterization, and you don't mind Hunter's spin on 'the magnificent seven' and 'seven against thebes', you'll love this. Like I said, no slow bits, races along, has good action and Earl in the center of all things. And this is good. Only criticism: Bobby-lee doesn't get much of a part. Redeeming that to some extent (and totally cool as well): Audie Ryan...Sounds oddly like some other american with an irish name doesn't it???

Warning: this book will make 6+ hours of your life disappear if you're not careful! But it's a good way to lose 6+hours...

Enjoy!

Rating:
Summary: Vengeance isn¿t always the Property of the Lord
Review: It's 1951 and Former Arkansas prosecutor Sam Vincent takes an assignment from a Chicago lawyer to investigate the disappearance of a client somewhere in the backwoods by Thebes, Mississippi, near the Thebes State Penal Farm.

Sam doesn't want the job, but needs the money so he goes to Mississippi and finds a brutal place where white guards dominate and abuse their helpless black victims, and where something much worse is going on.

He tells his best friend Arkansas cop Earl Swagger and when Sam gets into trouble, it's up to Earl to get him out of it and he does it in a way you'll never forget. Five stars for this very descriptive, revenge type novel.

Reviewed by Vesta Irene