Hot Springs

Starred review from May 29, 2000
Furnished with brilliant period detail and a dynamo of a lead character, this big, brawny crime drama recountsDin highly fictionalized formDthe true story of the backlash against corruption and decadence in Hot Springs, Ark., during the years following WWII. Bobby Lee Swagger, the Vietnam vet hero of three of Hunter's previous books (most recently, Time to Hunt), is here supplanted as protagonist by his father. Earl Swagger, a fierce, highly decorated WWII Pacific theater warrior, is a man haunted by the horrors of war, as well as by the abuse he suffered as a child at the hands of his brutal father. Recruited by the district attorney in Hot Springs to help break the hold of mob boss Owney Maddox on the city, Earl, assisted by his team of "Jayhawkers," raids several casinos and whorehouses. He is unaware that he's being betrayed by elements within his unit and by outside forces he thought were on his side. Meanwhile, Earl's personal life is in tattersDhis wife is suffering through a perilous pregnancy and he can barely go a minute without mulling over his wartime sins. And he can't stop thinking back on life with his cruel, enigmatic father, his drunken mother, and his helpless younger brother, who committed suicide at 15 to escape it all. Hunter, a film critic for the Washington Post, has written a powerful, sweeping story, one that effectively deals with multiple themes: the anguish of war vets, deep-seated racism, and fairness and duty in personal and professional life. His prose, including some wonderful stretches of backwoods dialect and gritty scenes of physical and emotional turmoil, has that rare visual quality that takes the action off the page and into the mind. Agent, Esther Newberg at ICM. 200,000 first printing; optioned for film by Miramax; 8-city author tour.

February 15, 2000
In 1946, a troubled lawman fights corruption in Hot Spring, AR, home of flagrant gambling, prostitution, and mob rule. Hunter, author of best sellers like Time To Hunt, is an award-winning film critic whose new novel has just been optioned by Miramax.

Copyright 2000 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

June 1, 2000
Furnished with brilliant period detail and a dynamo of a lead character, this big, brawny crime drama recounts-in highly fictionalized form-the true story of the backlash against corruption and decadence in Hot Springs, Ark., during the years following WWII. Bobby Lee Swagger, the Vietnam vet hero of three of Hunter's previous books (most recently, Time to Hunt), is here supplanted as protagonist by his father. Earl Swagger, a fierce, highly decorated WWII Pacific theater warrior, is a man haunted by the horrors of war, as well as by the abuse he suffered as a child at the hands of his brutal father. Recruited by the district attorney in Hot Springs to help break the hold of mob boss Owney Maddox on the city, Earl, assisted by his team of "Jayhawkers," raids several casinos and whorehouses. He is unaware that he's being betrayed by elements within his unit and by outside forces he thought were on his side. Meanwhile, Earl's personal life is in tatters-his wife is suffering through a perilous pregnancy and he can barely go a minute without mulling over his wartime sins. And he can't stop thinking back on life with his cruel, enigmatic father, his drunken mother, and his helpless younger brother, who committed suicide at 15 to escape it all. Hunter, a film critic for the Washington Post, has written a powerful, sweeping story, one that effectively deals with multiple themes: the anguish of war vets, deep-seated racism, and fairness and duty in personal and professional life. His prose, including some wonderful stretches of backwoods dialect and gritty scenes of physical and emotional turmoil, has that rare visual quality that takes the action off the page and into the mind. Agent, Esther Newberg at ICM. 200,000 first printing; optioned for film by Miramax; 8-city author tour. (July)

Copyright 2000 School Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

Starred review from May 1, 2000
Not many of today's writers write authentic hard-boiled prose, the kind Dashiell Hammett wrote in "Red Harvest," in which an army of private detectives and hired gunmen clean up a graft-infected mining town called Poisonville. There's a lot of shooting in "Red Harvest" and books like it--men who love guns and love using them, killing each other over a squabble that is finally less important than the gunplay itself. Modern sensibilities get ruffled over this sort of thing, naturally, leaving the hard-boiled style without the substance. Not so in Hunter's new novel, a reimagining of "Red Harvest," set in 1946, in which a World War II hero is hired to help clean up Hot Springs, Arkansas, where gangster Owney Madden has created a vacation wonderland for bad guys--casinos, whorehouses, and if you choose, a dip in the springs themselves. Earl Swagger is recruited by an ambitious district attorney with his eyes on the governor's mansion to train a commando unit that will destroy Madden's empire and restore Hot Springs to the mainstream. Struggling with his own inner demons (the warrior reentering polite society), Earl jumps at the chance to do the only thing he does well: kill people. But what about his pregnant wife and her dreams of domestic life? Earl wants that, too, but what he really needs is the " hot pounding of the gun, the furious intensity of it all." Hunter lets out all the stops here, stooping to heavy-handed melodrama on occasion (the subplot about Earl's abusive father), but it's hard to resist the sheer force of the narrative. This is a violent book about the allure of violence, and it pulls all the archetypal strings that Hammett pulled and that the best westerns have always pulled. (Imagine Earl Swagger as a descendant of Clint Eastwood in "The Unforgiven.") Hunter's uncluttered prose, like Hammett's, draws power from the no-nonsense precision with which it describes the action and the hardware that propels it. Yes, we're far more comfortable today with the trappings of the hard-boiled style than with the real thing. Hunter shows us why. ((Reviewed May 1, 2000))(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2000, American Library Association.)

March 1, 2001
Adult/High School-Earl Swagger returns from World War II with the medals of a hero and the moral exhaustion of a man who has seen and done too many unthinkable things, and is recruited for a different kind of war: cleaning up a corrupt gambling town in his home state of Arkansas. The bad guys, no-tably casino-czar Owney Maddox and visit-ing bigwig Bugsy Siegel, wear pricey suits and drive fancy cars, but they are just as dangerous as the enemy in the South Pacific and almost as well armed. Earl trains a small band of untried lawmen and leads them into battle for moral possession of the town. While the story is action-packed, it's the background that keeps it from being just another shoot-'em-up. Earl is haunted by both his future and his past. While he fights the good fight, his lonely wife awaits the birth of their son, who will grow up to be the hero of Hunter's earlier Swagger books. And he can't escape the ghosts of a brother who killed himself and a lawman father who was mysteriously murdered just before he left for the war. The interweaving of past and present intensifies the plot and reveals Earl as a multifaceted hero, in contrast to the stock characters who surround him. Readers who find violence exciting will get their fill, but they will also see that the scars it leaves may never heal, and that winning the war may be just the start of the battle.-Jan Tarasovic, West Springfield High School, Fairfax County, VA

Copyright 2001 School Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

May 15, 2000
Readers familiar with the exploits of Bob Lee Swagger (e.g., Time To Hunt, Black Light) will delight in this prequel featuring Earl Swagger, Bob Lee's father. At the end of World War II, Hot Springs, AK, is a wide-open town, where gambling, prostitution, liquor, and drugs are readily available, compliments of the syndicate. When Earl Swagger returns home from an extended tour of duty in the Marine Corps, Fred C. Becker, prosecuting attorney of Garland County, hires him and a retired FBI agent to train a team of special agents to clean up Hot Springs. The cleanup operation quickly escalates into a series of bloody battles between special agents and hired gunmen, including a hit team from New York. Becker, whose political career is in jeopardy, tries unsuccessfully to end the conflict, which plays out to its logical conclusion. Loosely based on a historical event called the Veterans' Revolt, this is an action-packed, cops-and-gangsters tale with larger-than-life characters and a thrill on every page. Recommended for all public libraries. [Previewed in Prepub Alert, LJ 2/15/00.]--Thomas L. Kilpatrick, Southern Illinois Univ., Carbondale Lib.

Copyright 2000 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.