The Third Bullet: Concluding the Saga of Bob Lee Swagger, American Gunman
When Stephen Hunter’s fictional hero Bob Lee Swagger came to bookstores with the 1993 novel Point of Impact, most of the critics attributed the character’s success to Hunter’s vivid writing style, especially as applied to the lore of the gun. As much or more than any other writer alive, Hunter understands that firearms and the men who wield them, what he calls the American Gunman — though not in the pejorative sense — constituted a major cultural theme in the history of the United States. He is Shane riding into a frontier town, or John Dillinger wreathed in Thompson submachine gun smoke, or Audie Murphy holding a battalion of Nazi infantry at bay. The American Gunman was a figure of myth at par with Achilles and his nodding plumes and Hunter hit the mother lode in depicting him.
But what set apart Bob Lee Swagger in 1993 was something else. He was more than just another portrayal of that myth. In Bob Lee Swagger, who we first find holed up in a trailer in Arkansas with nothing but his wits, rifle and vague unease, Hunter had created the perfect symbol of a generation betrayed. Swagger in his beginnings was really all those Vietnam vets whose superlative skill, sacrifice and prowess had been wasted by the self-appointed Best and the Brightest, sent to their doom for reasons that were too clever by half and which even the puppeteers had themselves forgotten.
So when Bob Lee Swagger is set up as a patsy for the assassination of a left-wing, Third World clergyman by Ivy League covert operatives pursuing their own doubtful agenda in Point of Impact, the reader feels the betrayal anew. When Swagger takes apart his opponents in the finale ,you can imagine a certain demographic of readers were not only reading a story, but cheering as they took vicarious revenge for the outrage perpetrated upon their idealism and youth.
It is perhaps no coincidence that Swagger’s success came shortly after the popularity of the Rambo movies. It was a time when the public was beginning to realize that mainstream media Vietnam and Cold War narratives were not exactly the real story. And Swagger was the beneficiary of that growing awareness.
The real attraction of Bob Lee Swagger, something Hunter would occasionally forget — but not for long – was not in the action scenes he featured in, but in who he was. To follow the Swagger character in those times before the Internet was to participate in an act of vicarious rebellion against the Narrative; to secretly hum the literary equivalent of that once popular song whose refrain went “take this job and shove it. I ain’t working here no more.”
Although all of the Bob Lee Swagger novels are entertaining, only two reach the level of Point of Impact. There is Time to Hunt, which is arguably the best and again a return to the lost threads of the Vietnam War, and then there is his latest novel, The Third Bullet, due out in January, 2013 of which I have an advance copy.
Although set in the approximate present, The Third Bullet is more about the 1960s than any other of Hunter’s recent books. It is a return as it were to the Origin of Everything. The dramatic hook is nothing less than the central mystery of modern American history, the JFK assassination. What happened on That Day in Dallas, the day which had such fateful consequences for Bob the Nailer’s generation? And who better to answer the question and unravel its final mysteries than Bob Lee Swagger himself?
“Bob the Nailer” understands guns, and in Hunter’s view the key to decoding what happened in Dealey Plaza in 1963 is to know what guns are capable and not capable of doing. So about a quarter of the book is spent watching Swagger being forced to think through the problem afresh and driven to conclude by the timeline, history, and above all ballistics that not only were the Warren Commissioners wrong but nearly all the conspiracy buffs were as well.
Of course you’re not expected to believe the theory, which is a literary device, but it is tribute to Hunter’s narrative skill that what emerges is at least as credible as any many other theories that have been proposed. The rest of the book of course naturally consists in watching the developing duel of wits between Bob Lee Swagger and the unseen enemy mastermind. They include the set-piece action scenes for which Hunter is famous. There are shootouts on American streets, in a Russian city, and of course the showdown on the final distant hilltop which is the trademark Boss Battle of Swagger novels.
But what puts The Third Bullet on the level with Point of Impact and Time to Hunt is that it concludes the Bob Swagger story. Although I leave it to the reader to discover whether our hero physically survives in the plotline, there is the definite sense that the arc for which Bob the Nailer has been dramatically created has been successfully and satisfyingly fulfilled. The character who was born in Point of Impact and who grows to maturity in Time to Hunt has achieved in The Third Bullet what only the protagonists in successful literary serials can do: put the roof on a complete fictional universe; round out a virtual world that makes sense in its entirety and make it a place that we are content to revisit again and again just to see if everything was where we left it. If there’s a Pantheon for fictional American Gunmen, then Swagger has made it in.
The Third Bullet due out in January, 2013 — not coincidentally the 50th anniversary year of That Day in Dallas.
Belmont Commenters
How to Publish on Amazon’s Kindle for $2.99
The Three Conjectures at Amazon Kindle for $1.99
Storming the Castle at Amazon Kindle for $3.99
No Way In at Amazon Kindle $8.95, print $9.99
*****
Cross-posted from Belmont Club
More on books at PJ Lifestyle:
I’ll have to check it out.
Charles McCarry’s Tears of Autumn, btw, gave the most original, and though-provoking, fiction-based explanation for the Kennedy assassination that I have read.
Um, what the heck are you talking about? The mainstream narrative over Viet Nam was defeatism with a tinge of War Criminal, and included a whole bunch of outright lies (“destroy the villiage to save it”, the “tiger cages”). The first two Rambo movies were very different from each other; the second is the one Reagan referred to, but even it partook of the “anti-war” chic.
Viet Nam became “immoral” when we lost it, retroactively. This is simply a version of witch-hunting or scapegoating, needing to find a crime in every tragedy. (Like in the current fiscal crisis.) If anyone was to blame – not implying here that the people who created the ROE’s were blameless – it was a racist “anti-war” movement, which refused to believe that people who did not look like us or practice our religion might be entitled in personal liberty. (Look at Taiwan and South Korea today.)
I grew up expecting to be in that war, as my Dad was in the Korean War and his Dad in WWI, and had no problem with it. The main crime of the war was in ending it and betraying the people and fighting men – and they did fight, contrary to another myth – of the Republic of South Viet Nam.
All we really know about the JFK assassination is what we see on the Zapruder film: two shots fired from two different directions and neither of them coming from the Dallas School Book Depository building. If Stephen Hunter’s novel doesn’t give that scenario, it’s probably wrong.
We actually know WAY more now about what happened than what shows up in the Zapruder film thanks to years of research by literally scores of writers and researchers aided by the release of more material from the secret archives back in the 90′s brought about by the attention focused on the assassination by Oliver Stone’s film JFK. Some of the best books on the assassination were written in the past 10 years.
If you’re interested, one of the best books out there is a deeply-researched book by a former priest, James W. Douglass. The book, JFK and the Unspeakable; Why He Died and Why it Matters, has over 100 pages of footnotes, many from government documents, that detail exactly how JFK evolved over his presidency and how that came in conflict with the military-industrial complex and presents new, eye-witness testimony on various scenes never before revealed.
But, the Zapruder film does show one unassailable truth, JFK’s head jerking BACK AND TO THE LEFT and Jackie reaching behind to pick up parts of his scull off the BACK of the limousine (which she was still holding when she arrived at Parkland). Yet, the Warren Commission wanted us to think a lone gunman shooting from high above and to the rear could cause that to happen and an amazing number of people accepted it.
My brother, now a retired Marine, has seen Dealy Plaza and the Texas School Book Depository building. He tells me that the photography from the window Oswald fired from is misleading; it is much closer that the imagery makes it appear. He says that it is an easy shot for any trained Marine rifelman. Oswald was a trained Marine rifleman.
Yet even the best marksman was hard-pressed to get off three shots with a bolt-action rifle in the several seconds that the shots recorded happened in. Later when a sound recording was found and studied by the House Select Committee on Assassinations in the 70′s, audio experts detect FOUR shots, two happening almost on top of each other. The committee concluded that there were multiple shooters and that the JFK assassination was a conspiracy but then gave little detail of who might have been involved and locked away it’s records.
That secrecy was incredibly DEMANDED by the CIA and acceded to by the committee. The first chief counsel for the committee was pushed out when he refused to cave in to CIA demands about secrecy and the counsel that replaced him played by CIA rules but later wrote a scathing condemnation of the interference by the CIA in their investigation.
The Oswald/single shooter theory also has other gapping holes. For starters, why would a shooter take the difficult shot of JFK moving away at a farther distance than the easy shot of Kennedy coming straight at him at close range? Oswald was also ID’d TWO minutes after the shooting calmly drinking a coke in the lunch room of the book depository two floors below the supposed snipers nest.
If you do any reading at all on this subject you’ll find it impossible to conclude Oswald was the lone gunman. He might not have even fired a shot and he actually might have been working to PREVENT the assassination. He was on the payrolls of both the FBI and the CIA during that time but he was set up to take the fall. The coverup by the FBI and the CIA literally jumps off the page as you read some of the research done on the assassination. As Oswald said before he was conveniently killed, “I’m a patsy”.
Oswald shot his 6.5mm rifle 3 times in about 8.5 seconds and hit his target (JFK’s head) one out of three times.
He had no alibi, and quickly fled the scene of the crime, leaving his jacket behind.
TOF makes a lot of sense.
Baloney. People cannot stand the idea that a significant event can happen without a conspiracy. Oswald used a surplus military rifle with surplus military solid-point ball ammunition, designed to penetrate and disable an enemy. One bullet went through JFK and hit Connelly. The bullet was designed to do that. Kennedy was an easy going-away target, in a slow-moving vehicle. Oswald got a job in the book repository weeks before the Kennedy people even planned the Dallas visit. It is a scary thought, that something catastrophic can happen without some agency having controlled it. When all else fails, we blame God or the gods, but not accidents or crimes of opportunity.
I urge you guys to watch “JFK beyond the magic bullet” on the military channel. It’s a two ppart recreation of the shooting. They (an austrailian crew) were able to get all the wounds from the 2 bullets using a carcano m38. orginal ammmo. They hade synthetic torsos made up by a lab that does ballistiics tests, and explosives test . Really blows away the consipacy theories…
Oh, I love this “conspiracy,” Obi, please don’t go away.
1. I like Ockham’s razor, you won’t.
2. The rule in adult discussions is that he who asserts, proves and it is impossible to prove a negative!
3. In your first post the first two paragraphs lack any substansives. See, one and two above. The third gives a datum but then draws an unsubstatiated conclusion. And no I don’t have to prove you assertion wrong as is well known among adults it is impossible to prove a negative. As far as your assertion, see number two above.
4. As far as your second post… Oh, forget it, just see number two above. Although I do want to draw attention to the following species of so called “reasoning.”
“For starters, why would a shooter take the difficult shot of JFK moving away at a farther distance than the easy shot of Kennedy coming straight at him at close range?”
The “…why would.. ” is a favorite in conspiracy theories and always appears to state something as obvious and then invites you to disprove it. Please see numbers two and three above.
5. The Italian Carcano rifle was purchased from Klein’s sporting good in
Chicago as I recall, a cheap throw together but sufficient for one go-around as we saw. This action is the second fastest bolt action in the world, after the Lee Enfield. I saw with my own eyes, at a range, an official of the NRA make the same number of shots in the said number of seconds. The round is very long, giving it high secontal density, and full patch; designed for exactly the type of penetration that occured.
6. Obi, please, please post some more… I’m begging now.
As far as shooting a bolt action rifle within 8.3 seconds goes, I think people forget that the first shot starts on 0 and the other two take up the 8.3 seconds.
Another thing – Oswald was actually picked up on suspicion of having murdered police officer J.D. Tippitt. It was easily proved he did that – so why would he have been around shooting police officers, if it wasn’t the fear of being arrested for the murder of the president?
Interesting (but ultimately futile) comments on the J.F.K. killing. However, this column is about Stephen Hunter’s books, all of which I’ve read and enjoyed many times over. A new book by him is a cause for celebration. Here’s a Pulitzer Prize winning movie columnist for the Washington Post (!!) who writes books conservatives can enjoy. Nuanced but ultimately sympathetic to a Vietnam War hero… who would think such books could even get published? Watch his interviews with Glenn Reynolds on Instavision for enjoyable views on writing as a craft and the role of the gun in American history. And, yes, at least one Canadian appreciates how much good has been achieved in this world through America’s willingness to stand up for the rest of us. I sat with my sons a few nights ago watching “Act of Valor” and was gratified to see how moved they were by it’s unshowy portrayal of genuine heroes. Stephen Hunter’s books speak to the same warrior ethos.