I, sniper

The opening shots of the novel hit four well-known activists of the 1960s, each felled from a great distance by an unseen marksman. The news media descends, and the FBI, under Special Agent Nick Memphis, soon points to Carl Hitchcock, a decorated Marine whose ninety-three confirmed kills made him the top American sniper of the Vietnam War. Before the Bureau can close in on him, Hitchcock takes his own life.

For Nick, the case seems to tie up neatly. The timeline, the ballistics, the forensic evidence, and the suspect's motive and access all line up. Yet the result looks almost too tidy, and Nick turns to his friend Bob Lee Swagger, a retired Marine sniper, to check the evidence. Swagger spots irregularities no one else would notice and begins peeling back layers of a sophisticated plot that could only have been carried out by elite special operations specialists with mastery of long-range shooting. Meanwhile, Nick must hold his ground against aggressive public relations maneuvers and a media campaign demanding he be removed from the case.

As Swagger digs deeper into the hidden world of snipers and the newest technology they use, the conspirators realize he is getting close. They are heavily armed and ready to kill him, but they have miscalculated, because they think they are the ones doing the hunting. The story builds toward a final confrontation between Swagger and the remaining opponents, staged in the old tradition of a duel with firearms.

The novel is aimed at adult readers of military and crime-driven suspense, especially those who follow Stephen Hunter's work. It is the book in which Bob Lee Swagger returns to the center of the action, and readers who know the earlier Swagger novels will find him in familiar territory.