Shooter. (Photo by: Dean Buscher/USA Network)
It would be hard to overstate how much I loved Stephen Hunter’s thriller “Point of Impact.” I stayed up to 4 a.m. reading “one more chapter” in this tale of reclusive Vietnam veteran Marine sniper Bob Lee Swagger. I worked at a bookstore here in Sisters at that time, and I hand-sold literally hundreds of copies of this taut tale with its iconic hero. It’s a classic chase thriller that showed real understanding and respect both for the gun culture and for the badass Scots-Irish culture at the bedrock of that culture. Good shit.
Hunter had a couple more good Bob Lee Swagger novels in him — and several that ranged from not-so-good to really bad. “Point of Impact” was made into the movie “Shooter,” an updated take on the tale starring Mark Wahlberg. It was a pretty good thriller, though I have to say the best part was Levon Helm as a rifle crank expert with a sketchy CV.
Now we’ve got us a series. Again, updated to contemporary times, which is smart.
From Deadline:
USA Network has set a new premiere date for its thriller drama series Shooter starring Ryan Phillippe. The series, based on Stephen Hunter’s novel “Point of Impact” and the 2007 Mark Wahlberg film “Shooter,” is now slated for debut on November 15, about two months after its original premiere date.
Shooter centers on Bob Lee Swagger (Phillippe), a highly decorated ex-Marine sniper who is coaxed back into action to foil a plot to kill the president but ends up being framed for murder. The series’ original July 19 premiere was postponed in the wake of the July 7 sniper attack on Dallas police officers, which left five cops dead. The Shooter debut was then pushed a second time after the July 17 attack in Baton Rouge, La., in which a shooter killed three policemen.
I’ll give it a whirl, as a tip of the hat to the source material, but I have my doubts. I’ll try to set aside my biases — I pictured Steve McQueen as Bob Lee Swagger and still do. Ryan Phillippe ain’t no Steve McQueen. If it doesn’t catch me in the first hour, I’ll be done — but I figure I owe Bob Lee a shot.
Matthew says
I’ve never read Hunter, but I’ve always wondered if I should.
Donald Hamilton also a writer who wrote about guns in his novels. His Matt Helm books talk a lot about guns a lot. The Executioner novels are basically about guns. Sometimes they are basically descriptions of guns and descriptions of people shooting the guns (at other people.)
JimC says
You should definitely read Point of Impact. The rest are hit-and-miss (sorry for the pun). I liked Black Light and Hot Springs, which bring in Bob Lee’s father Earl, pretty well. The later Swagger books just got stupid, but PoI is really, really good.
Matthew says
I’ll probably read PoI sometime.
John Cornelius says
I always pictured Bob the Nailer more in the Clint Eastwood mold. Lean, hardscrabble, taciturn. Steve McQueen would work fine, too. Hunter definitely ran too far with the character. The 47th Samurai was nothing short of ludicrous. I liked Shooter a lot. Kate Mara is a smoke-show.
Bro John
JimC says
There is a shotgun in this picture.
Matthew says
Why does holding a gun make her sexier? Is it something Freudian?
JimC says
Nah — just a pretty girl who looks like she can take care of business. That’s ALWAYS sexy.
deuce says
Hey now! That gal is distant kin of mine.
JimC says
Your cousin?
John Cornelius says
Don’t forget Dirty White Boys. That was a great (if disturbing) read. And it turns out, there was an Earl Swagger/Bob Lee Swagger twist that we learned about in another book. No spoilers, though.
Bro John
JimC says
Yeah, that was a good one, too.
Craig Rullman says
Loved me some Dirty White Boys. Good stuff.
deuce says
Slightly OT, but the Correia “Monster Hunter Interantional” books are well-written gun porn. Correia is an REH fan.
JimC says
I liked his strange but satisfying military thriller Dead Six quite a lot.
Breaker Morant says
There are 2 books that I recommend to men who don’t read. “Point of Impact” and “Shadow Divers”-true story about the guys who found the Nazi U-Boat off New Jersey in the 90’s.
One of my favorite things about Shadow Divers is that there were still enough people alive from the era that it helped the research and so forth.
Not a huge fan of the later Hunter-but, I kind of liked the recent WW2 Russian sniper woman book.
JimC says
I considered picking up the Russian book, but I’ve been burned so many times…
Thedarkman says
Dirty White Boys is punch-in-the-guts awesome. Some of the most intense gunfights ever put on paper…
john roberts says
Tommy Lee Jones was born to play Bob Lee Swagger. Even has the same middle name.
“Havana”, an Earl Swagger book, is pretty good. It brings out something Ive long thought: ‘the Castro thing was totally bungled by the State Department. there was a window when we could have wooed Castro to our side. He’d never read Marx and had no concept of communism, just a romantic vision of himself as a liberator. Earl sees that, but he’s outmaneuvered by his Soviet counterpart, who sees great possibilities in this big Cuban doofus. Definitely a good read.
“The Third Bullet” is a good read, too, but I’m prejudiced because I was near Dallas when the Kennedy hit went down.
JimC says
Tommy Lee Jones would indeed have made a great Bob Lee Swagger. Hillbilly gravitas — no “pretty.” I think you’re absolutely right, re: Castro. And other “liberation” movements for that matter. We fell into some foolish binary thinking about that stuff during the Cold War and misread nationalisms that we could well have supported.