- Paperback: 532 pages
- Publisher: Washington Square Pr; Int edition (November 2000)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 0743410491
- ISBN-13: 978-0743410496
- Product Dimensions: 16.8 x 10.4 x 3.6 cm
- Shipping Weight: 227 g
- Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (73 customer reviews)
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Product Details |
Product Description
From Amazon
You can get anything you want in postwar Hot Springs, Arkansas--girls, gambling, drugs, or booze--courtesy of gangster Owney Madden, a picaresque character who affects jodhpurs, ascots, and an English accent to disguise his origins in New York's Hell's Kitchen. A county prosecutor, ambitious for higher office, sees Madden's destruction as the key to his political future, and he thinks Medal of Honor winner Earl Swagger is the right man to break Madden's stranglehold on the corrupt city.
A decent man haunted by his warrior past as well as the memory of his suffering at the hands of an abusive father, Earl yearns for the peace and quiet of domesticity with his wife Junie and the child she carries. But his need for "the hot pounding of the gun, the furious intensity of it all," is even more compelling. Earl's fearlessness in the face of danger is his defense against guilt over having survived both the war and his father's cruelty. Tasked with training a commando cadre to destroy Madden's criminal enterprise, Earl finds a way to channel his violent nature in the service of justice, despite his suspicions about his boss's political agenda, which threatens to compromise his assignment and destroy his team.
A prequel to Stephen Hunter's three well-reviewed suspense thrillers starring Earl's son, former marine sniper Bob Lee Swagger (Point of Impact, Black Light, Dirty White Boys), Hot Springs is bloody, hard-boiled fiction at its best. Hunter's precise descriptions of combat, hardware, and commando training are rendered in spare, uncluttered prose, and the melodrama around a key subplot--Earl's tangled, love-hate relationship with his murdered father--enhances rather than detracts from the novel's superb pacing and powerful narrative. Another subplot, involving Madden's rivalry with Bugsy Siegel, whose plan to create a rival sin city in Las Vegas threatens his own prominence, is less successful, but that's a minor quibble. While it's the only part of Hot Springs that doesn't fully engage the reader, it highlights Hunter's verisimilitude in depicting the heady post-World War II era. This is a highly readable book that should send grateful fans to Hunter's backlist as soon as they've turned the last page. --Jane Adams --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
From Publishers Weekly
Furnished with brilliant period detail and a dynamo of a lead character, this big, brawny crime drama recountsDin highly fictionalized formDthe true story of the backlash against corruption and decadence in Hot Springs, Ark., during the years following WWII. Bobby Lee Swagger, the Vietnam vet hero of three of Hunter's previous books (most recently, Time to Hunt), is here supplanted as protagonist by his father. Earl Swagger, a fierce, highly decorated WWII Pacific theater warrior, is a man haunted by the horrors of war, as well as by the abuse he suffered as a child at the hands of his brutal father. Recruited by the district attorney in Hot Springs to help break the hold of mob boss Owney Maddox on the city, Earl, assisted by his team of "Jayhawkers," raids several casinos and whorehouses. He is unaware that he's being betrayed by elements within his unit and by outside forces he thought were on his side. Meanwhile, Earl's personal life is in tattersDhis wife is suffering through a perilous pregnancy and he can barely go a minute without mulling over his wartime sins. And he can't stop thinking back on life with his cruel, enigmatic father, his drunken mother, and his helpless younger brother, who committed suicide at 15 to escape it all. Hunter, a film critic for the Washington Post, has written a powerful, sweeping story, one that effectively deals with multiple themes: the anguish of war vets, deep-seated racism, and fairness and duty in personal and professional life. His prose, including some wonderful stretches of backwoods dialect and gritty scenes of physical and emotional turmoil, has that rare visual quality that takes the action off the page and into the mind. Agent, Esther Newberg at ICM. 200,000 first printing; optioned for film by Miramax; 8-city author tour. (July)
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
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First Sentence
Earl's daddy was a sharp-dressed man. Read the first page
Front Cover | Copyright | Excerpt | Back Cover
Earl's daddy was a sharp-dressed man. Read the first page
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Front Cover | Copyright | Excerpt | Back Cover
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Most helpful customer reviews
4.0 out of 5 stars
Would Make a Good Movie!,
By A Customer
This review is from: Hot Springs (Mass Market Paperback)
Not as good as Point of Impact, but still a very good read and gets better as it motors along. Would make a good movie!
4.0 out of 5 stars
The way it was then.,
By Betty Burks "Betty Burks" (Knoxville, TN) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Hot Springs: A Novel (Hardcover)
This novel was a story of a place, a man, corruption in the forties USA (gangsters), movie stars and young misfits chosen for 'raids' on casinos in Hot Springs, Arkansas.Garrison Keillor made the remark while doing his radio program from Hot Springs that it is the buckle on the Bible Belt. Read this and find out why. I knew nothing about the gambling there. But, growing up poor in the South, I had no interest in throwing away money. Still don't. Mr. Hunter brings to life the many celebrities I've heard of who went there to entertain the rich and famous who gambled away the nights; I was shocked to learn that fellow Tennessean Dinah Shore was involved. She with the squeaky-clean image. He entertains and teaches us all about weapons, crime in the war years (did the Great Train Robbery actually take place there in the rail yard of Hot Springs?), and putting foolish young men in danger of rapid death. He brought to life the actual gangsters who were involved in forming the gambling industry in this country. I hope he goes on to reveal all the secrets of how Las Vegas was built; now that I know about the corrupt politicians who accepted payoffs in that hillbilly state, I want to learn more. Not that I will become a gambler. I'm too old for that.
4.0 out of 5 stars
More of that great Swagger action!,
By
This review is from: Hot Springs (Mass Market Paperback)
This book is a prequel to the novel ï¿Point of Impactï¿ which centered around Bobby Lee Swagger. ï¿Hot Springsï¿ instead focuses on Earl Swagger, Bobby Leeï¿s father. Earl Swagger has just returned from WWII where his valor in combat earned him the Medal of Honor. He returns to Arkansas where he grew up and tries to settle down with his young, beautiful and now pregnant wife and live a normal life. But the Swagger blood doesnï¿t appear to be able to thrive unless it is in peril and before long, Swagger is working for an Arkansas D.A. to build a fighting unit to wipe out crime in the gangster controlled gambling town of Hot Springs.Like all of the Swagger novels, this book is filled with great combat scenes and tactics as well as extensive details on firearms. Set in 1946, the novel also paints a very vivid portrait of vice and the power of gangsters to control a city or even a state. If you enjoyed the other Swagger (Bobby Lee) novels, this newest turn will not disappoint you. If you have never read a Stephen Hunter novel, welcome and get ready for a good old fashion good guys with guns versus bad guys with guns book you will enjoy.
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