The Third Bullet
A Bob Lee Swagger Novel
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4.0 • 453 Ratings
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- $1.99
Publisher Description
Former marine sniper Bob Lee Swagger investigates one of the most enduring controversies of our time—the JFK assassination—in this New York Times bestselling “terrific thriller” (Booklist, starred review).
It’s not even a clue. It’s a whisper, a trace, a ghost echo, drifting down through the decades via chance connections so fragile that they would disintegrate in the puff of a breath. But it’s enough to get legendary former Marine sniper Bob Lee Swagger interested in the events of November 22, 1963, and the third bullet that so decisively ended the life of John F. Kennedy and set the stage for one of the most enduring controversies of our time.
Swagger begins his slow night stalk through a much-traveled landscape, unraveling government cover-ups and Cold War secrets. But he’s asking questions that few have asked before: Why did the third bullet explode? Why did Lee Harvey Oswald, about to become the most hunted man on earth, risk it all by returning to his rooming house to secure a pistol he easily could have brought with him? How could a conspiracy that went unpenetrated for fifty years have been thrown together in the two and a half days between the announcement of the president’s route and the assassination itself?
As Bob investigates, another voice enters the narrative: knowing, ironic, almost familiar, that of a gifted, Yale-educated veteran of the CIA Plans Division. Hugh Meachum has secrets and the means and the will to keep them buried. When weighed against his own legacy, Swagger’s life is an insignificant expense—but to blunt the threat, he’ll first have to ambush the assassin.
As each man hunts the other across today’s globe and through the thickets of history, The Third Bullet builds to an explosive climax that will finally prove what Bob Lee Swagger has always known: it’s never too late for justice.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In bestseller Hunter's solid eighth thriller featuring master sniper Bob Lee Swagger (after 2010's Dead Zero), Swagger is living an isolated existence in a small Idaho town, where a widow seeking justice for her husband seeks him out. Novelist James Aptapton was killed by a hit-and-run driver in Baltimore, but his journalist wife, Jean Marquez, suspects the killing was intentional. For motive, she points to recent research Aptapton conducted in Dallas, where he was following up on reports that a coat stained with gun-cleaning fluid was found hidden in the Dal-Tex Building next door to the infamous Texas Book Depository. On November 22, 1963, that building could have housed a sniper other than Oswald. After accepting Marquez's request for help, Swagger plunges into the byzantine world of conspiracy theory. Hunter develops some new angles on the JFK assassination, and as usual keeps the details about ballistics and weaponry accessible.
Customer Reviews
Third Bullet
I've read all the Swagger books. While this is a definite departure from Hunter's norm, he spins a good tale and a plausible alternative JFK assassination theory. Well worth the read although it dragged a bit in a couple of area.
The Best!
I just finished and really enjoyed every page of this book. The author never let's any of us shooters down with inaccurate firearms data. This theory, which would be completely missed or discounted by those unfamiliar with ballistics, definitely holds water. Your next step MUST be to make a movie that holds true to this novel, with an accurately aged and appearing Bob Lee Swagger.
The Third Bullet
I've read almost all Hunter's "Swagger" books and will admit some disappointment with this one. Took effort to remain engaged with the plot and it addresses something out of history which already has been "conspiracy theoried" to death. Make sure to keep the caffeine flowing if you want to make this into a page turning piece of excitement.