Point of Impact

I was intrigued after watching the (lame) film Shooter, which is based on this book, to see just how badly Hollywood screwed it up. My hunch was that the damage was extensive as the film was poorly done, but the story idea was a good one. Knowing Stephen Hunter is a damn fine writer I figured I had nothing to loose. My hunch was correct, Point of Impact is a taut thriller with great characters and deeply researched back up information to move the story along. In short, read the book; skip the movie.

Let's just say if you've got a member of a gun control group on your Christmas list, this book would be the worst possible gift! Stephen Hunter's Point of Impact is a lovingly-crafted mash note to precision firearms, and it's excellent.

Bob Lee Swagger was the creme de la creme of Vietnam snipers, but he's at loose ends back in civilian life. So he's eager to take up a sniping-analysis job that's a perfect exercise of his unique skills. Could it be too good to be true? And how!

Although Bob Lee is not the world's most realistic character, as other reviewers have noted, he's not really the point here. It's the guns that are the real focus of point of impact, and they're handled with consummate skill worthy of Bob Lee himself.

Recommended.

Well told story, strong and interesting main character, and good if twisty plot. Closest comparison I could make to this would be the Reacher series. Ex military, just wants to do his own thing, no one will leave him in peace, and somehow he keeps stumbling across malevolently evil people. Once involved, he has to see a thing through and deliver justice. One of these books actually has another character describe swagger as a righteous killer or something similar.

Everything has a sniper angle - long range hidden shooting, planning, and counters to the same - and the limited number of people who can reliably make really long shots is a significant plot point.

The story is well told, moves quickly, and I really enjoyed this one.

Bob Lee Swagger, retired Marine sniper, has isolated himself in the Ouachita Mountains of Arkansas. After 87 kills in Vietnam, he is “simply and explicitly an extraordinary killer”, but one who has given up killing. His life still revolves around guns, hunting, and shooting, but he doesn’t kill with his shots. When two strangers arrive at his fence, his first inclination is to send them away. But one of them has a Congressional Medal of Honor, just like his father won at Iwo Jima, so Bob decides to give them a few minutes. They want to hire Bob to hunt the Russian sniper who ended Bob’s career as a professional shooter and killed Bob’s spotter. This same Russian sniper has a new target – the President of the United States. show more Bob finds the Russian, and a shot is fired. The world tilts sideways. Now a suspect himself, Bob must find out the truth about who set him up and what the real goal was. The sixth Swagger novel, I, Sniper, was released in December 2009. show less

This was a fun read and I'd recommend it to anyone looking for a typical techno-thriller. On the positive side, the book moves quickly, with lots of twists and turns to the plot, the action is fairly relentless, and the view into the technical side of the sniper profession is very interesting.

On the negative side, the hero is just a bit too much of a superman. This isn't in reference to his shooting ability—there are documented cases of Viet Nam and Middle East snipers doing the same things. No, Swagger's superpowers were in his ability to completely predict everything his adversaries were going to do, right down to the second. It disturbed the flow of the book at times. It wasn't unduly unsettling; I just tend to prefer my characters show more to be slightly more believable.

I had seen the movie based upon this book..."Shooter"...before reading the novel and, even though I knew some of the plot twists, I still enjoyed it enough to read it in a single sitting. Give it a try if you like the genre.

As a side note, reading reviews of the sequel, The 47th Samurai, I understand that Swagger's superabilities extend to becoming a world-class master of the samurai sword with about a week's practice, so I think I'll just stop here. Those kinds of things should be left for Dirk Pitt or other protagonists whose authors have their tongues firmly in their cheeks. show less

I enjoyed the movie, Shooter, enough to check the book it was based on.

Thoroughly enjoyable. A bit of gun porn, with numbers and X's and this's and that's thrown about that meant absolutely nothing to me, but it didn't really detract from the story.

Shooting, government conspiracies, etc, etc.

It wrapped up nicely and Bob Lee gets to walk off into the sunset.

And then I see that it is a whole series. He's a middle age man from Vietnam. How many adventures can he have? I guess I'll be finding out.

> "Your boyfriend killed forty-four men today, honey…" Payne had to laugh. Swagger wasn’t good, he was beyond good. He was so fucking good it was scary. He could hear the fear in Shreck’s voice. Forty-four men dead, including nine of his best guys who’d climbed aboard a chopper in an attempt to get some firepower on Bob from a new angle, and had been rewarded with a flaming death.