Hot Springs

Rating:
Summary: More of that great Swagger action!
Review: This book is a prequel to the novel 'Point of Impact' which centered around Bobby Lee Swagger. 'Hot Springs' instead focuses on Earl Swagger, Bobby Lee's father. Earl Swagger has just returned from WWII where his valor in combat earned him the Medal of Honor. He returns to Arkansas where he grew up and tries to settle down with his young, beautiful and now pregnant wife and live a normal life. But the Swagger blood doesn't appear to be able to thrive unless it is in peril and before long, Swagger is working for an Arkansas D.A. to build a fighting unit to wipe out crime in the gangster controlled gambling town of Hot Springs.

Like all of the Swagger novels, this book is filled with great combat scenes and tactics as well as extensive details on firearms. Set in 1946, the novel also paints a very vivid portrait of vice and the power of gangsters to control a city or even a state. If you enjoyed the other Swagger (Bobby Lee) novels, this newest turn will not disappoint you. If you have never read a Stephen Hunter novel, welcome and get ready for a good old fashion good guys with guns versus bad guys with guns book you will enjoy.

Rating:
Summary: More of that great Swagger action!
Review: This book is a prequel to the novel �Point of Impact� which centered around Bobby Lee Swagger. �Hot Springs� instead focuses on Earl Swagger, Bobby Lee�s father. Earl Swagger has just returned from WWII where his valor in combat earned him the Medal of Honor. He returns to Arkansas where he grew up and tries to settle down with his young, beautiful and now pregnant wife and live a normal life. But the Swagger blood doesn�t appear to be able to thrive unless it is in peril and before long, Swagger is working for an Arkansas D.A. to build a fighting unit to wipe out crime in the gangster controlled gambling town of Hot Springs.

Like all of the Swagger novels, this book is filled with great combat scenes and tactics as well as extensive details on firearms. Set in 1946, the novel also paints a very vivid portrait of vice and the power of gangsters to control a city or even a state. If you enjoyed the other Swagger (Bobby Lee) novels, this newest turn will not disappoint you. If you have never read a Stephen Hunter novel, welcome and get ready for a good old fashion good guys with guns versus bad guys with guns book you will enjoy.

Rating:
Summary: A Very Enjoyable Crime Novel
Review: This is only the second book I've read by Stephen Hunter, after _Point of Impact_, but it was another winner. The book mixes real history and characters with fictional characters to great effect, something along the lines of what Max Allan Collins does in his Nate Heller mysteries. Set in the post-WWII years in the corrupt town of Hot Springs, Arkansas, Hunter succeeds in creating a real page-turner, as we follow the adventures of Earl Swagger, a depressed war hero with something of a death wish, as he puts together a group of young lawmen to weed out the corruption.

The group is something like the Untouchables--young, single men gathered from police forces around the country so that they will not be compromised by local connections. The scenes of the group's training are among the best in the book, along with the action sequences wherein they bring down a number of casinos.

This isn't a perfect book by any means: Hunter really strains sometimes to tell his story and there are a lot of very awkward sentence constructions. He isn't entirely successful in bringing the historical characters--Bugsy Siegel, Virginia Hill, etc.--to real, believable life. And, as in the Bob Lee Swagger books, there's a bit too much attention to the guns and the gunplay for any but the firearms-obsessed, which Hunter appears to be.

Still, this was a very fast-moving and enjoyable book and I'd recommend it.

Rating:
Summary: The way it was then.
Review: This novel was a story of a place, a man, corruption in the forties USA (gangsters), movie stars and young misfits chosen for 'raids' on casinos in Hot Springs, Arkansas.

Garrison Keillor made the remark while doing his radio program from Hot Springs that it is the buckle on the Bible Belt. Read this and find out why. I knew nothing about the gambling there. But, growing up poor in the South, I had no interest in throwing away money. Still don't.

Mr. Hunter brings to life the many celebrities I've heard of who went there to entertain the rich and famous who gambled away the nights; I was shocked to learn that fellow Tennessean Dinah Shore was involved. She with the squeaky-clean image.

He entertains and teaches us all about weapons, crime in the war years (did the Great Train Robbery actually take place there in the rail yard of Hot Springs?), and putting foolish young men in danger of rapid death. He brought to life the actual gangsters who were involved in forming the gambling industry in this country.

I hope he goes on to reveal all the secrets of how Las Vegas was built; now that I know about the corrupt politicians who accepted payoffs in that hillbilly state, I want to learn more. Not that I will become a gambler. I'm too old for that.