Dead Zero

This book started out really well, but the ending was so incredibly stupid that I have to give it just a couple of stars. The book starts out with Ray Cruz, a Marine sniper who is tasked with having to assassinate an Afghan warlord named Ibrahim Zarzi. However, out in the Afghan wilderness, he and his spotter are jumped by mercenaries (American). His spotter is killed, he is wounded, but escapes. He tries to complete his mission, but a missile destroys the building he was going to use to do it on.

Fast forward in time. The FBI comes to one Bob Lee Swagger, the hero of Hunter's books up til now. Retired and an old former Marine sniper, they want his help in locating and stopping Cruz, because they've received a message from Cruz that he's show more going to somehow finish his mission, killing Zarzi in the US as he tours the country. He's changed his ways and is an American golden boy now, and we're promoting him for Afghan president. The problem is, the mercs are still after Cruz, and now they're after Swagger.

It's an action packed, fast paced mystery/thriller that is pretty exciting and even though it's not remotely believable, unlike Alex Berenson's novels, it's still a good ride. And then something happens. A few things.

I don't know how to write spoilers in these reviews, so I'm just going to write it here:

*** SPOILER ALERT***

Cruz turns out to be Swagger's son. Nice coincidence, that, don't you think? Now we can keep the book series alive, even as Swagger gets to be too old to continue. I didn't like that. Not at all. And I've read the next Cruz book and I hated it, so ... not thrilled.

The FBI finds out there's an emergency at the White House and they need a sniper. They call all of their snipers and find they've all gone home because they're tired out from what they just went through. So the FBI goes to the White House with Swagger and Cruz, who apparently aren't tired at all. But here's the thing -- doesn't the president have the ... Secret Service at all times? Wouldn't you think they'd have plenty of men around to terminate the threat? Wonder why Hunter didn't think of that....

Here's the kicker. Major spoiler. The ending is so damn stupid as to make the entire book useless. The bad guy did everything because he's pissed off at the West (and the US) for the introduction of the birth control pill in 1960 and what that has done to women. Yep. Women work now and earn just as much, if not more, than men. (Don't know where Hunter got that utterly false statistic.) Women should be barefoot and pregnant, apparently, and should know their place. The family unit is shrinking. Western society got along quite nicely for centuries with men in the lead and now, thanks to birth control, women are running wild. So Islam, with its misogynistic views, is our only hope. Yeah, I know. Can you believe that shit? That's the biggest pile of horseshit I've ever read. To think that an intelligent reading audience would buy that as the reason for taking down the US by a traitor is asinine. So I would give this book one star, but I'm giving it two because it was exciting, up til that point. Still, definitely not recommended. show less

I think the basic story line was really good but the dialogue! Ugh! When all the gold 'ole boys get together, the dialogue between them is so corny! Do men really talk to each other that way? I don't think so. And yes, we understand what a great guy Bob Lee is and how he's a hero. But do we have to hear about it on practically every page? May never read another Swagger novel. This isn't the first time I've noticed the dialogue, but it may be the last.

Substance: Enjoyed the action; good characterization; not for the faint of heart. Foul language on par for the genre and the characters.
What looked like far-fetched conspiracy fiction in 2010 seems much more plausible now (after the revelations about Benghazi, Fast & Furious, NSA whistleblowers, and IRS partisan chicanery).

Style: guilty of back-stitching, but otherwise okay. Retrospectively (after reading the jacket bio), it does read like a book by a film critic, but I was surprised the author was not former military - good research team?

I found a pretty good story line with believable characters, though the ending, as has been mentioned before, was pretty weak. All in all it was a good read that I felt could have been better.

Marine sniper, Ray Cruz, in Afghanistan fails his mission to assassinate a high level terrorist target known as the Beheader. Some years later Ray goes AWOL and rogue in order to complete his mission against the same terrorist target who is now an honored guess in the U.S. having become an important American asset to win the peace in the Middle East. Begins well but drags on a bit. There is quite a bit of cursing and sexual lewdness that lends nothing to the story. Seems like author was trying to hard to make it a macho style novel not only with his crude descriptions of sexual lusts by the bad guys but also with the personalities built into the two main male characters, heroes Bob Swagger and Ray Cruz. Swagger and Cruz are described as show more so over-the -top, hard-core military heroes that any attempt to paint them as frail human beings failed to win me any reader appreciation. Novel reads more like someone bragging about what he had really never done; I can almost sense the author wishing he were a sniper like Swagger or Cruz rather than be attached to the characters themselves. It reads limore like a novel written to bring some excitement to an author's seemingly boring life than for the purpose of entertaining the reader.

The unnecessary pornographic language contained in this book turns me off. I won't buy any of his other books. show less

Good story line and characters...weak ending with the Hellfire missile hitting the Rose Garden and only 6 people getting killed.