Pale Horse Coming

Rating:
Summary: A fun entertaining thriller
Review: Earl Swagger and his son Bob Lee are the antiheros of this wonderful series of thrillers by bestselling author, Stephen Hunter. Guns play a major part of his work. They are lovingly described and their use is always necessary to gain the desired result. The books are always thick, yet, the pages fly by so quickly that they read like much shorter books. The writing is always strong and sure and this latest is no exception.
It is 1951 and Earl Swagger is approached by his good friend, Sam Vincent, ex prosecutor of Polk County, Arkansas. Sam accepts a job from a Chicago attorney to locate a black man living in Thebes State Penal Colony in Thebes, Mississippi. The prison is truly Hell on Earth surrounded by swamps and only accessible by a muddy river. The guards are brutal and gain much perverse pleasure in torturing the inmates. Sam just wants Earl to know where he is headed and to investigate his whereabouts if he doesn't return in a certain time. As expected, Sam is not heard from and Earl must start on his perilous journey to rescue his friend.
Stephen Hunter, a film critic for The Washington Post, is an expert on entertainment and uses his expertise when creating his novels. They are among the best thrillers being written today. It is true that the plot can be quite contrived and silly at times, however, they work well. The characters are straight out of the pages of pulp fiction or comic books. The sadistic prison guard, Bigboy, is a pure stereotype. Earl is a superman able to suffer great punishment in just a few minutes than the mere mortal man can endure in a lifetime. Yet, it is fun to root for Earl Swagger to fight and defeat evil wherever he finds it.

Rating:
Summary: Excellent southern dialect and recreation of hard times
Review: Earl Swagger's a tough guy, no doubt about it. He's also a man of integrity. His closest friend, Sam Vincent, also is a man of integrity. But it's a different kind of integrity. Not a different shade or a different color. Just an integrity based on a different set of rules.

There's a gritty scene in the movie "The Untouchables" where Sean Connery corners Kevin Costner, the idealistic Federal Cop who wants to get the mob, and Connery asks him, "how far are you willing to go?"

And that really is the difference between Vincent and Swagger. Vincent wants retribution, but he wants to do it legally. Swagger, the Congressional Medal of Honor winner from only six years before, wants to right horrid, terrible wrongs, but he's willing to do 'whatever it takes.'

Sam Vincent is on assignment for a 'Chicago Lawyer' when he's taken custody in the Thebes Mississippi Penal Farm, a backwater penitentiary built for African American inmates convicted of violent felonies. The dialogue used by the guards as well as Vincent and Swagger seems to be right out of the 50's and what I imagine it would sound like in rural, swampwater, bayou Mississippi.

Vincent gets caught investigating the Penal Farm and tossed in the lockup. Earl Swagger goes down to rescue him, and in the rescue he saves Vincent but gets caught. Beaten, whipped, crushed, nearly drowned, he escapes and goes back to right the wrongs he witnessed, suspected and were perpetrated upon him.

A little light on plot going from the possibly believable to the "I can't believe this part" however government conspiracy, mad Doctor and the crazed warden nevertheless, an exciting book. Good dialogue. Like all Hunter novels, pretty heavy on the violence. My favorite Hunter still remains "Dirty White Boys," however the Swagger series, father and son, are top shelf reading excitement. 4 stars. Larry Scantlebury

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: Southern Seven Samurai
Review: Medal of Honor winner Earl Swagger recruits six top gun men to bring righteous retribution to a hell-hole called Thebes. Thebes, located in the remotest swamps of Mississippi, is a penal farm designed for the most recalcitrant black offenders. It is cut off from the outside world and no one is privy to the evil events that transpire there - except for some very powerful people in very high places. Earl Swagger gets to experience the horrors of Thebes when he becomes its first white inmate. Earl 'returns from the dead' for his 'second coming' into Thebes, but this time he's part of a band of seven avenging angels. The bad guys include a muscled, sadistic albino called 'Big Boy', a milquetoast racist warden, and a machine-gun totting guard named "Section Boss'. The warden inhabits an old, rotting mansion that's right out of William Faulkner. There's even the Faulkneresque dysfunctional family that's cursed by the sin of Racism. For all these interesting ingredients, Pale Horse Coming lacks the high-octane suspense of some Hunter's other novels. Even at his best, Hunter's work is not serious literature. If you like shoot-em-up action where Evil is put on the run, then you will enjoy Pale Horse Coming.

Rating:
Summary: A thrilling thriller!
Review: Pale Horse Coming is a great Stephen Hunter novel, just like all others in the Swagger series. This one features Earl Swagger, just like his last one, Hot Springs. But Pale Horse Coming is better. From the jacket, you know the general plot of Earl destroying a prison. The first few pages had me hooked as the town and prison of Thebes is established to be an evil, mysterious place, and Earl's friend Sam agrees to go there to find a missing person.

The action picks up when Sam is arrested and Earl goes to find him. The rest of the plot is pretty straight forward without any surprising twists, but that doesn't mean there isn't any suspense. There are a few slow parts in the book, and those include Sam trying to find out the history of Thebes including all of its deep dark secrets. Some of this seems drawn out and predictible, yet not enough to slow the story down. The best parts were the scenes at the prison, where evil truly existed. Those parts made the climax that much greater, when you had a true sense of the evil Earl and his friends were fighting.

Now for a few random thoughts. Stephen Hunter isn't a racist, but in writing a period piece with racism as the primary force of evil, there are parts that are bound to be uncomfortable. So, any black person should be aware of the brutal treatment of the black prisioners and the frequent use of racial slurs. Perhaps the worst part is realizing that attitudes like this did exist, and perhaps still do.

Reading Amazon reviews is the only way I found out that all of the characters on Earl's posse were real-life gunmen. However, the name Audie Ryan did ring a bell. Just like in Hot Springs, Hunter used realife characters. I don't think it detracted from the story, because in this book, I had never heard of them.

In the climactic battle, Hunter writes with the belief that if you are a good gunman, you can defeat several people with your precise shooting alone. I think Hunter gives a good shooter too much credit. Other men with guns would probably get in a few kills now and then.

Finally, this is the fifth book in the Swagger series I believe, and the one that relates best to it is Black Light. In that book, Earl's son Bob Lee tries to figure out the mystery of his father's death. I know Hunter wrote Black Light several years ago. But if I remember right, Earl was killed rather easily considering the mayhem and death he survived in this book and Hot Springs. The Earl Swagger in this book would not have died so easily in Black Light. I may reread Black Light to see if my memory is correct.

I recommend all books in the Swagger series to anyone who enjoys Pale Horse Coming.