Black Light
by Stephen Hunter
Book Summary Information
Author: Stephen HunterEdition: Mass Market Paperback
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 1997-04-07
ISBN: 044022313X
Number of pages: 528
Publisher: Island Books
Book Reviews of Black Light
Book Review: Redneck James Bond
Summary: 5 Stars
I'm a redneck, so that's not a put down.
Some critics complain because, according to them, this is not Hunter's best. One complains because the title refers to untraviolet light, while in this story they use infrared (I'd bet the author knew that, and that the handle 'black light' is interchangeable). Then there is the guy from Pennsylvania who asserts that this is a true reflection of how horribly the white race treated the blacks in the South. I lived in Florida as a youth, and in my opinion, "black hell" is the urban North, not in the rural South.
None of this is what the book is about. This is an exciting adventure thriller about the son of an Oklahoma highway patrolman, retired, who apprehended, shot and killed a "bad guy" who had terrorized Oklahoma and the Texas panhandle, after breaking out of the prison in McAlester with his cousin and another man. That story was told in Dirty White Boys, another of Hunter's atories. This book is a follow-up, although it stands alone and needn't be read in series.
Bob Lee Swagger is the son of Earl Swagger, an Arkansas highway patrolman who was killed by two cousins on a crime rampage, and was himself killed in the ensuing gun battle. But, there is a mystery as to who actually killed Earl Swagger, a congreesional medal of honor recipient. Bob Lee Swagger, Earl's son, and Russ Pewtie, son of Oklahoma highway patrolman Bud Pewtie, set out to solve the mystery.
If you like fast-moving action thrillers, with lots of suspense, good characterization, and excellent plotting and research, you will appreciate Stephen Hunter's books, and this is no exception. He writes masterfully, which is why he is a top-selling author in his genre. He knows firearms, and has an encylopedic knowledge of makes, models, ballistics, and accessories. To boot, he telegraphs a conservative's viewpoint, which is an added attraction for me (liberals tend to be gun-haters, and seem to know very little about them--and it shows.)
As to the critics who complain that this is not Hunter's best, I am left begging the questions: Why? What is missing? The plotting is still excellent. His vocabulary is not diminished. The suspense is maintained throughout. The story still holds you, as do his others. What is it that makes it any less than his other stories, if that is so? I found it just as good. I find him at the top of storytellers in his genre. I'm always amazed at the fault-finders who pit a great novelist against himself, like a golfer who is in a slump. There is no slump here. I'll read as many of Stephen Hunter's books as I can get hold of, and enjopy them all equally. The carping critics who attempt to show their great erudition by faulting genius should, perhaps, show us how it should be done with their own book, for comparison.
Joseph (Joe) Pierre
author of Handguns and Freedom...their care and maintenance
and other books
Summary of Black Light
Only one thing stands between a son and his father's killer: forty years of lies..On a remote Arizona ranch, a man who has known loss, fear, and war weeps for the first time since he was a child. His tears are for the father taken from him four decades before in a deadly shoot-out. And his grief will lead him back to the place where he was born, where his father died, and where a brutal conspiracy is about to explode.
For Bob Lee Swagger, the world changed on that hot day in Blue Eye, Arkansas, when two local boys rode armed and wild in a '55 Fairlane convertible. Swagger's father, Earl, a state trooper, was investigating the brutal murder of a young woman that day. By midnight Earl Swagger lay dead in a deserted cornfield.
Now Bob Lee wants answers. He wants to know the truth behind the shoot -out that took his father's life, a mystery buried in forty years of lies. Because for Bob Lee Swagger, the killing didn't end that day in Blue Eye, Arkansas. The killing had just begun...
Weaving together characters from his national bestsellers Point of Impact and Dirty White Boys, Stephen Hunter's gripping thriller builds to an exhilarating climax--and an explosion of gunfire that blasts open the secrets of two generations.
Forty years ago, Bob Lee Swagger's father, a state trooper, was killed by two robbers in an Arkansas shoot-out. Now a young writer has arrived at Swagger's door with some penetrating and troubling questions. What really happened that long-ago Arkansas night? The powers that be don't want that question answered, but Swagger, to his surprise, finds that he does -- even if it means having to use his long-abandoned combat skills and cunning to find out. Like the infrared "black light" that exposes a sniper's target in the night, Swagger homes in on the shadowy figures desperate to keep the secret of his father's murder buried.
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