Hot Springs (Earl Swagger Novels)

HOT SPRINGS

Earl Swagger is tough as hell. But even tough guys have their secrets. Plagued by the memory of his abusive father, apprehensive about his own impending parenthood, Earl is a decorated ex-Marine of absolute integrity -- and overwhelming melancholy. Now he's about to face his biggest, bloodiest challenge yet.

It is the summer of 1946, organized crime's garish golden age, when American justice seems to have gone to seed for good. Nowhere is this more true than in Hot Springs, Arkansas, the reigning capital of corruption. When the district attorney vows to bring down the mob, Earl is recruited to run the show. As casino raids erupt into nerve-shattering combat amid screaming prostitutes and fleeing johns, the body count mounts -- along with the suspense.

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You can get anything you want in postwar Hot Springs, Arkansas--girls, gambling, drugs, or booze--courtesy of gangster Owney Madden, a picaresque character who affects jodhpurs, ascots, and an English accent to disguise his origins in New York's Hell's Kitchen. A county prosecutor, ambitious for higher office, sees Madden's destruction as the key to his political future, and he thinks Medal of Honor winner Earl Swagger is the right man to break Madden's stranglehold on the corrupt city.

A decent man haunted by his warrior past as well as the memory of his suffering at the hands of an abusive father, Earl yearns for the peace and quiet of domesticity with his wife Junie and the child she carries. But his need for "the hot pounding of the gun, the furious intensity of it all," is even more compelling. Earl's fearlessness in the face of danger is his defense against guilt over having survived both the war and his father's cruelty. Tasked with training a commando cadre to destroy Madden's criminal enterprise, Earl finds a way to channel his violent nature in the service of justice, despite his suspicions about his boss's political agenda, which threatens to compromise his assignment and destroy his team.

A prequel to Stephen Hunter's three well-reviewed suspense thrillers starring Earl's son, former marine sniper Bob Lee Swagger (Point of Impact, Black Light, Dirty White Boys), Hot Springs is bloody, hard-boiled fiction at its best. Hunter's precise descriptions of combat, hardware, and commando training are rendered in spare, uncluttered prose, and the melodrama around a key subplot--Earl's tangled, love-hate relationship with his murdered father--enhances rather than detracts from the novel's superb pacing and powerful narrative. Another subplot, involving Madden's rivalry with Bugsy Siegel, whose plan to create a rival sin city in Las Vegas threatens his own prominence, is less successful, but that's a minor quibble. While it's the only part of Hot Springs that doesn't fully engage the reader, it highlights Hunter's verisimilitude in depicting the heady post-World War II era. This is a highly readable book that should send grateful fans to Hunter's backlist as soon as they've turned the last page. --Jane Adams

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All Customer Reviews
Average Customer Review:
0 of 0 people found the following review helpful:

Fantastic Author, 2008-05-09
This is my Third Stephen Hunter novel. I can't believe I have gone this long in my life without ever hearing of him. Each book seems to better than the last. I read Point of Impact first (having seen the movie) then Day Before Midnight. I can not wait to read the next. Sure, there may be a flaw here and there and maybe even a stretch of the plot to get from point to point, but the writing is so well crafted and researched, its a fantastic page turner, right up to the end. Do not miss it!!


0 of 0 people found the following review helpful:

Gritty and Explosive, 2007-09-28
Don't let this book pass you by. If you are into the fast paced yet creative and classic styles of writing, this book is for you. This is possibly the best of the Swagger series and Mr. Hunter's writing in general. Its a excellent example of the Gritty life of a hard times, fist pounding, gun toting, ex-marine who knows the business end of a gun. Throw in a medal of honor and a bit of Judo, and you have a man's man, ready to clean house on the bad Guys. However he is not without his demons, and Hunter skillfully works in this subplot with some surprises at the end. I would compare this book to "Shibumi" by Travanian. Which is a book you keep on the shelf for another read. Its a classic!



0 of 0 people found the following review helpful:

Earl Swaggert Mystery Early Years Solved., 2007-08-23
Steven Hunter undresses Earl Swaggert for us, and shows his soft side, his weak side, and now we know why he is so hard, dependable and honest. Excitement begins with page one, and takes the reader through the tameing of an out of control, sin city, where gambling, prostitution, and drugs are king. The courage of good, well intended men put their lives on the line to make Arkansas a better place to live. Conflick abounds. A good read.
R.L. Calentino
Laguna Hills, Ca.


2 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

Too good to be true, 2006-09-15
No one shoots straighter, hits harder, thinks clearer, talks plainer or acts manlier than Earl Swagger. By page 200, I wanted him dead. I've been a Hunter fan since I started reading his movie reviews in the Washington Post. And I think Dirty White Boys is a classic; I still have fond memories of reading it in a coin-laundry on the upper peninsula of Michigan on a very cold night. But Hot Springs got on my nerves. Writers are supposed to sympathize with their characters. Hunter goes way too far. His portrayal of Marine war hero turned lawman Earl Swagger plunges into hero worship. Earl can't just be the best shot among the lawmen assembled to bust up an Arkansas gambling syndicate; he has to be the best boxer too. No doubt, he's also a stallion in the sack. Sometimes Hunter veers disturbingly close to what seems like self-loathing for an East Coast movie critic and writer: Almost every educated, non-Southern character is a coward or a schemer, simply not worthy to stand in the presence of manly southern man Swagger. Sensing a potential chink in the armor, Hunter implausibly grants Swagger - a rural Arkansas lawman in 1946 - the enlightened racial outlook of a Freedom Rider. I started to think that Hunter and Swagger deserve the kind of treatment Mark Twain dished out to James Fenimore Cooper and Natty Bumppo. But heck, Hunter sure can tell a story. He gradually won me over again with entertaining villains and sharp storytelling. Is anyone better at keeping a story moving by cutting between different points of view? Plus, he works hard here to get the period detail (Sin City, Arkansas 1946) just right. There are even flashes of humor (something I never noticed before in a Hunter thriller), including a bit involving a clown. Bonus: a nice twist at the end for those who've read another Swagger tale, Black Light.


4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

It's Swagger time again!, 2006-08-02
Stephen Hunter is at his best when he writes about Swagger. So why change a winning "team"?
This time it's Earl Swagger and the story is based in 1946. Funny as it seems this time it's Earl who (also) has to deal with his father's fate - but this is not the main subject of the book.
Luckily Hunter did not copy the plot of his earlier books but created a completely different kind of mood and storyline. "Hot Springs" is not as complex as "Point of Impact" or "Time to Hunt" but straightforward, fast paced action with surprising twists and angles. This book sure is well worth reading.

Anybody who is not acquainted to Stephen Hunter books so far should read this one (and "Pale Horse Coming") before he starts reading the other Swagger books since this book is a prequel to the life of Bob Lee Swagger and explains why he became the man he is.

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