Pale Horse Coming

Rating:
Summary: Pale Horse Coming, Hell Follows with Him
Review: This is the first Stephen Hunter novel I've read and I'm impressed. I would recommend this novel to any one looking for a good, fast paced action novel to read. After reading this author I will certainly purchase more of his works. Buy this book, kick your feet up, and prepare to enjoy a good novel!

Rating:
Summary: Earl Swagger returns
Review: Stephen Hunter made a name for himself the last decade or so with the Swagger novels. Three involve Bob Lee Swagger, a Marine sniper in Viet Nam who just wants to retire peacefully to his native Arkansas. Pale Horse Coming is the second involving Earl Swagger, Bob Lee's father, a Marine Medal of Honor winner from the Pacific War who has returned to Arkansas to be a State Trooper. In this installment, an old family friend, Sam Vincent, gets himself into more trouble than you'd think a simple country lawyer could, and winds up a prisoner in Thebes, Mississippi, at a prison for Blacks that is so horrific it even has the same sign over the entrance as Auschwitz. Earl breaks Sam out of the prison, but is himself captured in the process. We then follow Earl through the horror of this place in all of its manifestations. Eventually, Earl breaks out, recruits a group of gunmen, and returns to kill the guards and destroy the prison.

The beginning of the book is paced reasonably well, but you know something more is going to happen, so you are anticipating what's to come. Earl's incarceration in the prison was interminable for me after a while: I think this is the weak point of the book. Once he escapes, the recruiting of the gunmen, and their return to Thebes, are interesting, with the proviso that suspense isn't an issue here: these guys are so good that the guards and local police don't stand a chance, and are soon running. Only the main bad guy characters provide any challenge at all. I gather that you can sort of recognize some of the gunmen from the last third of the book as pastiches of real individuals: the only one most readers are likely to recognize is a rather obvious Audie Murphy. This is in keeping with Hunter's previous books: Bob Lee Swagger's rival sniper in Viet Nam in Point of Impact is based on a real individual.

Given all of that, this is still a fun book. The plot moves right along, and the author has a good time with his characters. You can tell he's enjoying this. There's a whole sequence at the beginning with the Mississippi police deciding that a lawyer from Blue Eye Arkansas is probably sophisticated and a Yankee, and that drew several chuckles from me. I enjoyed this book a great deal, and would recommend it.

Rating:
Summary: Good... but not good enough
Review: When the bar is set as high as Mr Hunter's is, eventually there will be a disappointment. If this had been written by a newcomer, it would be a revelation. But following the unbelievable Bob Lee Swagger novels and the ripping Hot Springs, PHComing is a letdown, albeit an engrossing one. Don't get me wrong, you'll stay up late tearing through the pages, but the awe produced by the last 4 books (and even The Day Before Midnight) is absent.

Maybe it's a one-time blip. My other favorite tough guy author, James Ellroy, seems to have lost the plot completely with the sprawling mess of The Cold Six Thousand, but I think Mr Hunter still has it in him. I'm sure Bob the Nailer has a few more scrapes to fight his way out of.

Rating:
Summary: Missing a star due to post-traumatic stress.
Review: You can ask me to suspend my disbelief, and I'll do so willingly if you promise not to abuse the privilege.

So, of course, Mr. Hunter performs some minor transgressions against me and mine with unbelievable events, some bad narrative, and comic-book characterizations.

Yeah, like I really cared.

Mr. Hunter propels a reader through a book, much like Johnny Woo will propel a moviegoer through one of his hyperkinetic-fully-automatic-gun-battle flicks. You want action? All right, let's set up our protagonist being chased by armed men and hunting dogs. Not tough enough for you? All right, he's not allowed to kill any of the men. Still not tough enough for you? He's shepherding a city-bred lawyer through it all.

Sounds sketchy, but Mr. Hunter pulls it off, and you're hooked, you're deliberately slowing yourself down because you feel yourself itching, running past paragraphs because you have to know how it turns out. This is a book for action fans.

When I read a book like this, I have one prevailing thought running through my head: this would make a [good] movie. I don't think it's an accident that his action novels are that visual and descriptive: he's a film critic and obviously a fan of Audie Murphy, old Westerns, and hard-boiled movie action.

I took great pleasure it reading the book, and enjoying the slower sections, if only to catch my mental breath and savor what I knew to be a grand finale. Over the top finale? Perhaps, but you be the judge of its payoff.

Rating:
Summary: A middling disappointment
Review: I originally discovered Stephen Hunter at a local church's used book sale. The $.50 I spent on The Master Sniper was one of the best investments in entertainment I've ever made. Since then, I've picked up each of his paperbacks as it became available (in the bookstore, not the church).

Up until now, each of Hunter's stories has been strong enough to carry me past his poor sense of dialogue. But Bob Lee Swagger isn't much of a talker. While the story in Pale Horse is quite derivative (as previously noted), the real weakness is that the characters are "jawin'" way too much.

I know that occasionally in "real" literature, authors employ overwrought dialogue to denote...I dunno...either Britishness or their own lack of touch with reality (it varies). But it's usually a device of some sort. Pale Horse Coming was filled with the sort of speech that made me roll my eyes and more than a few passages that made me wince. My most painful example (aside from pretty much anything that came out of Sam Vincent's mouth):

Pg. 413: "You have killed me, damn you sir." Then
Pg. 422: "Damn you, you have killed me."

Who TALKS like that? Admittedly, born and raised within a $30 cab ride of NYC, I'm probably not the best judge of a Mississippi dialect, but ugh...Does anyone outside of cheesy romance novels really speak that way?

I really hope Mr. Hunter (or his editor) gets back on track next time. This was the first of his books that I found to be a labor to finish and I hope it will be the last.

Rating:
Summary: Ugly old men with guns
Review: For a book that takes place in Mississippi, Stephen Hunter's PALE HORSE COMING reads remarkably like a Larry McMurty western or plays like a Magnificent Seven movie.

This motif, of assembling a group of misfit specialists in a bloody campaign against an evil greater than any one of them, can work very well if treated well and Hunter generally manages to make this second Earl Swagger book entertaining if hardly ever plausible.

Hunter, a movie critic with the WASHINGTON POST, couldn't have not been thinking of COOL HAND LUKE while writing this typical shoot 'em up. Big Boy, for instance, must've had some inspiration from the silent sunglassed enforcer in that 60's classic.

Hunter seems to have taken a bunch of manly literary conceits and put them together to evoke some emotional, visceral response from the men for whom this book was obviously written, i.e. prisoner breaks out of prison and comes back to destroy prison (RAMBO II), assembling a bunch of specialists in the violent arts (old movie buffs will greatly enjoy his depiction of what is obviously Audie Murphy) who help the hero dismantle the prison (THE SEVEN SAMURAI, THE MAGNIFICENT SEVEN, THE MAGNIFICENT SEVEN RIDE!, THE DIRTY DOZEN, etc.).

Still, the gunplay is addictive to read, the evil plausibly real (anyone recall Joseph Mengele, the Nazi angel of death, and his Japanese counterparts?), and the heroes righteous enough to make this a damned good summer read. The old man's death from natural causes after blowing away almost a half dozen guys with cobra-like speed just moments earlier was a bit melodramatic but that's a small price to pay for enjoying this not-too-bad Swagger novel. Let's hope that this isn't the end of the line for the Swagger family.

Rating:
Summary: Good Earl Swagger story
Review: Stephen Hunter has a good book with Pale Horse Coming. If you enjoyed "Hot Springs" you will enjoy this book. Though there is so much action it tends to shallow out a little. But all in all it is good.

Rating:
Summary: The worst of Stephen Hunter
Review: I have read every book that Stephen has written, even the old stuff after I read Point of Impact. To be perfectly honest, this book didn't even hold my attention long enough for me to finish it. The book is full of gratuitious violence, racial sterotypes and seems to go nowhere.

Rating:
Summary: One of the best books I have ever read.
Review: In my senior year of high school, I was fortunate enough to take a semester-long class, entitled "Black Voices." In this class, I had the opportunity to experience the wonderful literature of Ralph Waldo Ellison, Richard Wright, and many others. By reading "Invisible Man" and "Native Son," I was able to garner a new found interest into the writings of the problems that result from prejudice, racism, and hatred.
Pale Horse Coming continued this interest by drawing on the storyline of a Black Prison down in Mississippi. The depth that Hunter writes at on this subject is incredible. It must have taken hours of research to learn the many nuances that Hunter writes about. Also, the book includes a favorite character of mine, Earl Swagger. Add to that a great plot, incredible action scenes, and you get a book that seems more like a true event than a novel.
If you want a book that deals with an unfortuante part of our nation's history, and includes superb dialogue and memorable action sequences, then this is the book for you. I would recommend it to anyone who wishes for a read that leaves a lasting impact.

Rating:
Summary: Turn your mind off, it is fun!
Review: Audie = Audie Murphy
Elmer = Elmer Keith
Jack = Jack O'Connor
Charlie = Charlie Askins
Ed = Ed McGivern
Bill = Bill Jordan