Mystery4
Point of Impact
Stephen Hunter
Nov 2009 Audio Book
Time to Hunt
Stephen Hunter
Nov 2009 Audio Book
Temple
Matthew Reilly Jan 2010
The Lost Throne
Chris Kuzneski
Feb 2010
Point of Impact
Stephen
Hunter Nov 2009 Audio Book
Bob Lee Swagger is a badly damaged Vietnam Veteran. Bob Lee was
the most effective and most highly decorated marine sniper in Vietnam.
The book opens with Bob Lee knocking down a huge old 12 point
buck. He uses a specially designed bullet that temporarily
stunned him - and then Bob Lee cut off the antlers to keep him from
being shot by trophy hunters. This is interspersed with a shadowy
group planning on using Bob Lee for their purposes. The scam is
that the "Bad Guys" hire Bob Lee to calculate how the President could
be killed so that they can frame Bob Lee for a murder. They are
successful and now Bob Lee is on the run and he is out for revenge and
to clear his name.
We follow the "Bad Guys" several efforts to kill Bob Lee and how his
skill and careful planning foils them each time. At the end he
gives himself up but he shows that it is all a frame-up because of a
simple precaution he had taken at the very first of the story.
The book was written before 1993 when it was copyrighted and it has
predated several novels with a similar theme - a "good guy" who is
damaged Vietnam veteran, bad guys using his expertise to frame him, and
several bad FBI, CIA, or other agents who are either evil or jump to
conclusions to quickly. It also illustrates the points made by
James Webb in his book on Scots-Irish in the US.
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Time to Hunt
Stephen
Hunter Nov 2009 Audio Book
Another chapter in the life of Bob Lee Swagger. A previous
chapter was Point of Impact and another may be Black Light. His
books bounce around. This one opens in the mountains of central
Idaho. A sniper waits for a small family. He thinks it is
Bob Lee, his wife Julie, and their daughter Nikki. The sniper
shoots and kills the man - but the man is not Bob Lee.
The book skips back to 1971 in Washington D. C. where Donny Fenn, the
first husband of Julie Fenn Swagger is stationed. He is on
ceremonial duties until a vengeful Naval Intelligence Officer sends him
back to Vietnam where he will become Bob Lee's spotter until he is
killed.
We jump back to Idaho just before the sniper shot. Bob and Julie
have a squabble so Julie and Nikki ride ahead. They are met by a
neighbor who is also on horseback and it is he that the sniper
kills. Julie is seriously wounded. Bob Lee determines to
find the sniper and find out why he/they are being targeted. Bob
Lee finally decided that it is not him, it is his wife Julie.
Why? By this time he is in Washington D.C. and the CIA flies him
back to Idaho to protect his wife. He parachutes down to the
cabin when she is staying and after a long gun battle he kills the
sniper.
After Julie heals, they move back to Arizona, and their horse recovery
care operation seems to be going well. Bob Lee decides to go back
and clean up a few rough edges. The CIA agent, who was the Naval
Intelligence Officer with Fenn follows him. He is tracked to an
abandoned warehouse. There they confront each other and just
before Bob Lee is to be killed he is able to set off a Claymore mine
which kills all of the CIA agents who were Soviet moles.
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Temple
Matthew Reilly Jan 2010
Do I hear Dan Brown muttering in the background? The hero of the book is a "mild mannered academic", Ancient Languages at NYU. He is not the world expert but he knows the gentleman. He is rushing to get to his morning class when he is met by fully armored special forces troops just outside his office. They are there on a mission from DARPA and they need his expertise. What follows is a series of wild adventures, our "mild mannered academic" turns into an amazed Superhero. He saves the world two or three times - it gets a little confusing. He makes use of Arthur C. Clarke's phrase, "Any sufficiently advanced science is indistinguishable from magic." or whatever. Unfortunately the author's science and math is not quite up to the task, it would have flowed a little better if "his Fairy Godmother flew up and touched her magic wand and he flew away from the Abrams tank that had just fallen out of the airplane."
I enjoy Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Adventure stories, I just like it a little clearer where we are from moment to moment. The book is worth a read while you are very bored, not otherwise.
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The Lost Throne
Chris Kuzneski Feb 2010
Dan Brown must be having a good day today. All sorts of people are using parts of his basic plot lines. This book features the search for a missing throne that was constructed for a statue of Zeus in ancient Greece. It had been missing for about 2,500 years, long before the Incas, Masons, or the Christian Church. The book features a couple of ex-Special Forces soldiers, a beautiful (is there any other kind?) archaeologist, a colony of monks and the Greek Orthodox Church, Interpol, and a group of Spartan Warriors. No, this is not a time traveller book, the Spartans are descendants of the originals who have kept their cultural identity intact for 3,000 years.
The hero's are of course the Special Forces guys. They are of course invulnerable and all powerful in all aspects other than their mastery of the English Language. They fight their way through incredible odds to achieve their quest - the retrieval of the old chair. Did I mention that it is really, really big and covered with gold? Anyway, the bad guys are vanquished, the good guys show signs of becoming rich, and an ancient wonder will soon be unveiled to the world. A little hokey but well worth an uncritical recreational read.
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