Point of Impact

This was easily hunter's best novel lots of fun to read lots of action and a great ending. Thank you thejoyed immensely

I'm a brand new Stephen Hunter/Bob Lee Swagger fan...can't wait to read the next in the series.Don't know how I've not read Stephen Hunter up till now but I'll make up for it. Count on it!

Bob Lee Swaggart, USMC retired, projects the cold calmness of a hard man, and if you sensed this about him, you'd be correct. "Bob the nailer," as he was known during his three tours in Nam, is one of the darkest of American heros, a sniper with 87 confirmed kills.Bob's career ended in '72 when he received a near fatal wound from an enemy sniper working at extreme range - the same incident in which Bob's spotter Donny Fenn was killed. Now, in the 1990's, Bob lives in the tiny town of Blue Eye, deep in the Ouachita hills of Arkansas. He still loves the hunt but no longer kills. He uses Delrin bullets which only stun the prey, usually mature bucks whose antlers he then cuts off, rendering the animal useless as a trophy and ensuring its long life.Enter twisted shrink Dobbler, Colonel Shreck and his henchman Jack Payne of the Ramdyne Corporation. They have a sinister plan, and Bob Lee Swaggart is the perfect fit. The question facing them is simple: how to find a trophy Bob Lee will hunt.How about the Russian sniper who killed the man's spotter and ended his career?Bob Lee is drawn in, allowed to fire a priceless rifle and prove he still has the skill. Slowly, Colonel Shreck reveals his true motive; there's a conspiracy to kill the president. The shot will be from more than fourteen hundred yards, an unheard of distance, and, the Russian will be the shooter. Only Bob Lee has the skills to figure out where and when it will happen.Bob Lee signs on, only to watch helplessly as the sniper kills not the president, but a Salvadoran Bishop who'd just been honored with the Medal of Freedom. Moments later, Jack Payne, supposed ally, shoots Bob Lee at point blank range. It's a setup. They're framing Bob Lee for the murder.Bob Lee throws himself out a window and practically into the arms of surprised FBI Special Agent Nick Memphis, who's been assigned to the far outskirts of the presidential cavalcade. Nick is the same notorious agent who muffed the shot and hit the person he was trying to rescue - leaving her a quadriplegic for life.Bob makes his escape good. Things are nowhere near as happy for Memphis. When the fleeing felon disarms him and steals his agency car, Nick takes yet another of what will become a progression of downward steps that could lead to the end of his career. Still, he can't help remembering the compassion in Bob Lee Swagger's eyes, and the fact that he didn't pull the trigger when he easily could have killed Nick.What follows is one of the most intriguing rollercoasters of story line I've read in many years. Bob Lee and Nick join forces, and Bob Lee forgets all about his vow never to kill again. You can't help but feel that even though the two are up against the FBI and the dark forces of the super secret RamDyne Corporation, the federal agencies are the ones who don't have a chance. I loved this one. I've seen the movie, too: the book is ten times better. Read it. Skip the movie until after.Art tirrell is the author of  The Secret Ever Keeps

It's great to know the story behind the movie. I enjoyed it completely. I will recommend the book to anyone.

It improved my understanding of long range shooting!

Superb action thriller with a complex, conspiracy driven plot. Bob Lee Swagger is an ordinarary man with an extraordinary talent, lured into a treacherous assassination plot he was never meant to survive. But of course he does survive, and thus embarks on an epic comeback tour of vengeance and retribution.Nearly 30 years after initial publication, Point of Impact remains timeless in its genre... I'm eager to follow up with the rest of the series.

...unfortunately, his transitions range from difficult to ugly. Cards on the table: this is escape fiction. It's made for the beach or some other leisure time that you want to be simply entertained, not intellectually challenged. The signature demand of escape fiction is that you NOT have to think about it.Generally, Hunter is great at this. Bob Lee Swagger is a tight-lipped Robert Mitchum character who ostensibly does only one thing well. He shoots. At that, he's the best. What he aims at, he hits.See how the last three sentences I wrote hang together. They have a rhythm that, while not similar to the seductive rhythm that Hunter starts this book with, is somewhat reflective of it. Rhythm is essential to escape fiction. It lulls you into a semi-torpor that allows for the complete suspension of disbelief. Statements, actions, character traits, plot twists and turns--you're ready to swallow all of them whole, so long as the rhythm stays on track. You become lost in the author's fantasy, the world he has created (or stolen, or remembers)the life of his protagonist, and you just want it to go on that way page after page.POINT OF IMPACT starts out this way. I found myself slipping through sentences at break-neck speed. Everything clicked.Until the start of Chapter Five where the second protagonist is introduced as a character in current narrative. This seems to happen suddenly after a long string of exposition. You're into the book 12% according to my Kindle which page numbers a closely guarded secret, and you see Swagger's relationship with those who seek to exploit him come to a mini-climax that you know can't be truly serious because, after all you've got 88% to go.Then, abruptly you are ripped out of your revery, torn from the perfect rhythm of the first four chapters and made to consider Nick Memphis' mournful loss of the love-of-his-life-that-he-never-had-sex-with-because-he-almost-murdered-her-by-way-of-introduction, and presto chango, THE SPELL IS BROKEN. Trying to capture the new rhythm proves to be impossible, although you get to stick your toe back in the next chapter.The consequence of the spell being broken and the rhythm changing is that you are no longer in suspension of disbelief mode and you begin to question his premises. This continues throughout the book as the spectacular action becomes less and less believable. You want to believe it, because that was the purpose of reading at the beach. (which I can do with my 3G Kindle, even if I have to buy a new book there to do so.)The narrative continues, but now, predictably. Swagger and Memphis catch their tits in the proverbial ringer. They blindly enter the ambush of no routine, then miraculously emerge. Hunter gives you clues, except now, instead of sliding along with the rhymic narrative, they stick out like billboards in the desert. You get the impression that Hunter wrote the book backwards so that the real Bob Lee Swagger can read ahead and see what he has to do to miraculously get out of the trap laid by the bad guys or the FBI's Howard Duty (another bad guy) or whoever. Since he's read say 50% ahead (don't ask me about pages--my Kindle doesn't do pages) he knows to sabotage his gun to prevent his conviction on homicide charges. Of course, Memphis isn't this smart. He just has blind faith because Swagger is pure and everybody else ain't.See what I mean? This sort of thing is not meant to be considered. You're supposed to just go with the flow. Stay in the stream and let the current carry you. But once you pop out on the far bank and climb through the mud and go to the trouble of drying your hair, you start to think about it and the incredible-bility of the book smacks you in the face. I have a lot of lesser criticisms of the book, because after chapter five I started underlining and entering notes. (something the Kindle does SO MUCH BETTER than real books) However, the book is already shot down. It was heading towards 5 stars, but I'm taking off a star and a half because Hunter made me think when I didn't want to.

Terrific writing, characters and concept. The technical aspects of shooting, especially sniping, make this an exceptional tale. Steven Hunter delivers the details manageably for the uninitiated and makes them digestible as well as important. It's a lengthy thriller largely because the first half or more would be sufficient for most tale tellers, but the story continues with what could have been a sequel, and then another twist or two. The tail end gets a bit out of hand, but not quite enough to make me lower my rating by a star. Most important, the book is far and away more gripping and satisfying than the movie made from it. I recommend ignoring the film if you've seen it...or look for it only AFTER reading the novel.

normally I read historical fiction like Bernard Cornwell, this book came as a surprise, many years ago I picked this book in a charity shop and was trapped, over the next few years I read it twice then lent it to some one and it disappeared. A couple of weeks ago I started to get withdrawal symptoms and bought it again , once more I can't put it down, I can not recommend it enough.P.S. I am 82 years old with a bad memory so its like reading old books for the first time

This is the first of Hunter's Bob Lee Swagger books, and the first of a proper trilogy (followed by Black Light and Time to Hunt) about Bob the Nailer, his war hero dad, and what happened in Vietnam. There are quite a few other Swagger books, but the plots get steadily more tenuous, even if they are (mostly) an enjoyable read. Anyway...I don't want to give it all away, but on to the broad outline of the plot: Bob Lee gets asked by some spooks to scope out a possible assassination threat to the President, is framed for the shooting (not the Pres, in the event), manages to escape, and sets out to discover the who, how, and why of the frame. On the way, he hooks up with a (sniper-trained) FBI agent and his late comrade-in-arms's girlfriend, and has numerous gun battles, before turning himself in and demonstratng his innocence to the courts.This is a thrilling roller-coaster of action, with lots of stuff about guns (Hunter is clearly a buff). Bob Lee is a great character - a hardscrabble redneck type with a strong sense of honour - and the twists and turns of the plot are well thought out. I loved this book, and have read it several times. It is way better than the film based on it (The Shooter, with Mark Wahlberg), which loses many of the twists of the plot (to save money, probably). Read this, don't watch that.

I'm not the kind of guy that normally reads books but I just couldn't put this thing down!Having already seen the film adaptation of this book, I kind of knew how the plotline would go, people have always told me that films are never as good as the books they're based on, I didn't believe them until I read this! There is so much more included in the novel than the film and it seems to me the film missed out the best bits! A great book for any guy really and well worth the money.

What a fantastic novel really hard to put down or jump a few chapters ahead because impatience gets the better of you. Buy and enjoy.

I enjoyed Hunters other sniper based books as they were easy going and lacking in technical machismo jargon. This one however went on and on and on and on...until I gave up just past the halfway point