I just finished Mr. Stephen Hunter’s newest book. A collection of 3 novellas ( short stories for those less pretentious ). Each story about one of the Swaggers, Charles, Earl and Bob. Pretty entertaining but I have some thoughts.
One through line of the book is a major continuity error. A gun owned and used by Charles, Bob’s Grandpa, was hidden away at the end of the main story in G’man while Earl is off in the Marines and found just a few years ago by Bob. How in the hell Earl has it in the late 40s and then Bob in the late 70s I have no idea. That is some major retconning, which I hate. Or its a continuity nightmare. Hunter has always had some continuity issues with his literary universe that can be ignored, but this one is joe biden level bad.

Next. Bob refers to Walmart selling “cheap chinese shit” in 1977. That is pretty amazing since in 1977 Walmart was hardly full of chinese made dogshit.

Some other gripes.

Hunter decided to drop in some not very subtle pro-choice abortion propaganda shit in the story. along with his commentary on racial relations in the last century, which you can reliably assume also stands as commentary on the same subject for current times. Thats how writers think.

The funny thing about this is all of the Swagger men are very flawed. Charles being a drunk who beat his son, and was literally a gay pedo. Since we know he was found by Earl dying in a whore house full of under age boys and the reason for his anger and bad temper was his attempts to suppress his being a closet homo who liked them underage. But he isn’t a racist! nothing worse than that! lol

The last story with Bob is said to be a Giallo. I won’t explain what that is in much detail because none of you care. Its a genre of Italian films with murder, suspense, sex , sleaze. Beautiful neon soaked lighting. Good stuff. He doesn’t pull it off. That’s ok, Its something that can only exist as film.

Solid book. I enjoyed it more than the last one and its great that we have gotten a few books from him that aren’t an attempt to fellate the FBI. 8-5 out of 10.