Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire Finally, An Author Gets It Right.

Just finished a book I picked yo at a leave one,take one table. Pale Horse Coming by Stephen Hunter is the first novel I remember reading by someone who knows what a firearm is and how they work. He wrote a pretty good story too boot. Think I will look for more by him.

I may have to get that book.

You will get a kick out of some of the names he uses in the last half of the book.

Yep, excellent book as are all of the Earl And Bob Lee Swagger books. His first one "The Master Sniper" is a great read and historically accurate.

I will be looking for them when I get home nd hit the library.

Stephen Hunter is one of the few that gets firearms details right over 90% of the time.

Yeah, but in "Hot Springs" he had Swagger's daddy shooting mule deer in Southwest Arkansas.

That's what I thought. For Washington Post guy he seems to me pretty good on his guns.

Maybe no so much on his deer identification.

He does seem to call all handgun grips stocks. I not Mr Browning called them stocks in his original patent but I have never seen the term used on other handguns. Maybe I have it wrong and he is right.

Some are definitely better than others.

Point of Impact is pretty good and fairly accurate. Much better than the movie they made after the book. Probably my favorite of his. Time to Hunt (kind of a sequel AND prequel) is also good.

Dirty White Boys is also pretty absorbing. IMO, his earlier work is best with the later novels getting progressively poorer and more desperate. An all to common trait for writers who are contracted to churn out books every year.

Yeah I really liked Pale Horse aw well, I think most here would enjoy it. I've read most or all of his books, and have enjoyed them all. Some a bit more than others, but all worth reading. Been trying to find an author lately whose books are consistently good, no luck so far.

he has a few more. but my favorite is pale horse and then point of impact. have read both over and over

They must be Smith & Wessons. Their wooden handles are called stocks; Colt and Ruger call them Grips. S & W calls the cylinder swing-out thingie a Yoke, and Colt and Ruger call it a Crane. A hand turns the cylinder on a S & W and a Colt, but a pawl does the job on a Ruger. You'll find different names for similar parts among different manufacturers. Just compare an exploded diagram of a Colt revolver to one of a Smith & Wesson and a Ruger, and you'll see these differences. To me, it means the author knows his stuff or did his homework.

Thanks. I believe if he is not a gun guy he did a lot of research.

If you're a gun lover, you really need to be reading Stephen Hunter. Start with Point of Impact and work through them all.

Thanks. I will start looking as soon as I get back home.

Stephen Hunter is a gun owner, hunter, collector, shooter, and reloader.

I've met him and talked with him. He is familiar with firearms.

L.W.

Does not surprise me at all. Really refreshing when when an author gets it right.

Absolutely. He knows his guns and all of his novels show it. He gets it right. BTW, he has retired from his job as film critic at the Washington Post and from time to time writes articles for the American Rifleman in addition to cranking out a new thriller every year. As one example, he wrote a nice article in 2010 on the Colt 1911 Super .38, now known as the .38 Super.

The latest novel, not yet released, is about a woman Russian sniper in WW2. I am anxious to see how he handles the characterization, which is so good in the Swagger series.

Yeah, I've read all of his books. I just re-read Point of Impact, Time to Hunt, and Dirty White Boys because I just finished all of the John Sanford books and was kind of bored.

The one he came out with last year about the Kennedy assassination (The Third Bullet) throws a pretty cool fictional spin on how things could have happened. But it's kind of a slow read with too much investigating and not enough action.