Join today and start reading your favorite books for Free!
Rate this book!
Write a review?
Right off the bat - I was very excited for this book - another Bob Lee Swagger book can only be a good thing.. right?Unfortunately - I had a real hard time finishing this book - Bob Lee is the main character, but could have easily been replaced by ANYONE - there was nothing overly Swagger'ish about this Swagger book. More like it seemed like it was a book with Swagger used as the main character just to shift more copies.This was disappointing in itself, but made even more so by the disjointed wr...
I have been a big fan of Hunter's for years and have enjoyed the Swagger books, (both father and son) but I have to say I was very disappointed by this book. Long, drawn out, and way too enamored with the details of ballistics, The Third Bullet was a slog. I kept going, waiting for something more unique and interesting (other than Hunter's JKF theory, which is revealed early on in the book and is basically the same plot he used in the first Swagger book - a fact acknowledged both in the novel an...
So Hunter almost always starts his novels with a witty, interesting and often blackly funny sequence. Here he literally kills himself (even a casual fan of Hunter’s would recognize the portly author that gets run the fuck over by some mysterious hitman in the first pages.) The late author’s grieving wife seeks out grand-master-of-all-things-gun Bob Lee and asks him to check out the circumstances in which he died. Turns out Aptapton/Hunter was researching the JFK assassination and had stumbled ac...
Hunter is always outstanding -- and Bob Lee is incredible.A "lousy" book by Hunter would rate a 4.5, this one's a 5.0. His writing is so good, it meets my LOFTY expectations every time. Thanks to Stephen Hunter for continuing to be my all time favorite author. This one is right up there -- tied with many of his for first!!Greg
The 50th Anniversary of President Kennedy’s assassination has brought out a number of fiction and nonfiction books about his murder. I’ve reviewed two: Steven King’s 11/22/63 and Bill O’Reilly’s Killing Lincoln (the latter being nonfiction). I rated both of them very highly. But Stephen Hunter’s The Third Bullet may just take the cake. His novel presents an extremely well researched and plausible theory that Lee Harvey Oswald did not act alone and, in fact, did not fire the fatal bullet. Hunter
i've read all the BLS books, and enjoyed the ride. This book was awful, i barely got through a few chapters and quit. Unreadable.
Ah, here we go again. I recently became acquainted with Hunter from reading "Point of Impact" Terrific book, I really enjoyed it. So I was excited to read another book with the great Bob Lee Swagger. As I began the book, I thought to myself this is great, here we go again. Swagger is an old man now, but he's a crazy old coot. I'm genuinely digging it. This story has some familiarization from PoI. The mood is similar, the characters the same, the plot... the SAME. And then it dawns on me. Wait a
The story line is richly entertaining, offering a plausible alternative theory to the Warren Commission lone-gun conclusion on the JFK assassination. It is extremely well researched and well written, which brought the suggested theory alive.I wanted to give this book a solid 4 star rating, but here is the reason I downgraded it. First of all, I am not a firearms enthusiast !!! Thus, I found the repeated description of guns, the various models and their ballistic properties too detailed, overwhel...
These thrillers by the now-retired Washington Post film critic are definitely a guilty pleasure. Bob Lee and his late daddy, Gunnery Sergeant Earl Swagger, are two of my favorite novelistic “action” heroes—right up there with Travis McGee and Spenser and Richard Sharpe.Just in time for the 50th Anniversary, this one grazes rather than fatally wounds the convoluted, paranoid world of JFK Assassination conspiracy theory. As you would expect from a “gun guy” like Hunter, he tries out some new appro...
The tale sets creaky ex-military sniper and former Arkansas sheriff Bob Lee Swagger on a path to solve the Kennedy assassination. This thriller was a lot of fun coming on the heels of reading Stephen King’s 11/22/63, both seemingly timed for the expected revival of public interest as the 50th anniversary of JFK’s death. A businessman has been killed in a suspicious hit and run accident and his wife suspects it might have something to do with his conspiracy theory hobby, which was stimulated by l...
I have never read an in-depth account of the JFK assassination or watched any shows/documentaries/wacko Oliver Stone movies/etc. Generally, I agree with our protagonist, former Marine sniper, Bob Lee Swagger on the topic (view spoiler)[Swagger laughed. “Frankly,” he said, “I don’t give a shit about JFK.” (hide spoiler)] But I have to give Mr. Hunter 4 Stars for providing a highly readable account of the event in The Third Bullet and a plausible alternative to the one-man/one gun accepted theory....
Absolutely my least favorite Hunter novel to date. Probably because the story is full of redundancy and much too long. The author writes of his characters being bored and I assure you the same is true of his readers. Only the end is worthwhile and all else is overfill. 2 of 10 stars
I put this on the "Thriller" shelf as well as my historical fiction shelf. It is and it isn't. Hunter is a good writer and this is also a good book. We've picked up Bob Lee's story here and (like your reviewer) he's getting a bit...long in the tooth. Vietnam was 50 years ago, ended in '73 ('75 actually) which is 40 years ago.Here the story takes up some well trod ground, the Kennedy assassination. Like so many others Bob get's involved in figuring out the conspiracy. Hunter does a good job of la...
58 years after the fateful day, Stephen Hunter explores the Kennedy assassination through the eyes of his usual hero, Bob Lee Swagger - homespun Marine sniper, and expert in all things related to guns. Hunter writes this story in two dramatically different ways - one in the third person through the eyes of Swagger, the plain-spoken, but brilliant ex Marine sniper. The other in first person, through the voice of a long-retired CIA agent with a very long history of organizing assassinations around...
While I still think Hunter's first book, "Point of Impact," is one of the best "action-thriller" books and a must read for anyone interested in the genre, I was a bit disappointed in "The Third Bullet." I found the pacing, especially in the middle when Hunter changes point-of-view between characters, a bit tedious. One of the things I loved about "Point of Impact," was what disappointed me most about "Third Bullet;" the pacing. Hunter really bogs down on the details of the JFK assassination. Whi...
I generally enjoy Stephen Hunter's writing, and I think Bob Lee Swagger is one of the most entertaining, richest characters in current thriller fiction. The problem: there's too much Hunter and not enough Swagger in this book. Long stretches are dedicated to exposition by characters who are, essentially, elderly blowhards. Several of the major characters' diction and dialog are indistinguishable: Nick Memphis talks just like Swagger; three other characters, whom I can't name because SPOILERS, ha...
The Third Bullet by Stephen HunterBob Lee Swagger is up to his neck in espionage and life threatening danger as he investigates the death of a man in Baltimore by hit-and-run. Information results in the man just returning from Dallas asking pointed questions concerning the JFK assassination. Swagger chooses the same path to see where it will lead and finds himself inquiring systematically the true magic of bullet number three involved in the assassination. Designed to penetrate, not fly apart, S...
This book had a promising start and I really enjoyed the first third and the review of the factual events on 22 November 1963. However when the story veered into Russian espionage and secret agent fantasy I could not sustain interest.
“The Third Bullet” by Stephen Hunter, published by Simon and Schuster.Category – Mystery/ThrillerThis is another Bob Lee Swagger novel written by Stephen Hunter. If you familiar with this series you will probably go and pick up the book without reading any reviews. If you are not familiar with Bob Lee this would be a good time to get acquainted.Over the last fifty years there have been many conspiracy theories concerning the assassination of JFK. Stephen Hunter comes up with yet another one but