What I've Read: Night of Thunder

I love vacations. It means I can, hopefully, create for myself a lot of free time to read and read and read. I love active vacations, but I need them to also include some simple chill-out time. Time to relax and get sucked into something fun. And since I have all but sworn off reading fiction, it is always helpful for a vacation to come along when I can stop everything and blow through the latest novels from the few writers I enjoy. So when I was down in Miami and Big Pine Key for a week, with Hurricane Ida kickin it off the coast, the sunshine was minimal and allowed me to relax and bust through some books.

Reading Stephen Hunter's novels are not something I came to all by myself. I must give credit to my buddy Gerry, who about 8 years ago suggested I read this book he had called The Day Before Midnight. It was bad-ass, let me tell you. I didn't have any preconceptions coming into it, and I loved every minute of reading it. I then went to the bookstore and bought up just about everything he wrote and blew through it all in a matter of weeks. Now, whenever Hunter releases a new book, it's pretty much guaranteed that I am checking it out.

Hunter is a film critic for the Washington Post. Most of the time, I hate his movie reviews. I may enjoy his novels, but he and I see film completely different on most occasions so I tend to avoid his columns at all cost. But within the novel world, he gets plenty of my attention.

Most of his novels surround an awesome character named Bob Lee Swagger. A former marine sniper, Swagger is your typical, "Don't fuck with me or my family" kind of guy. Sadly, everyone who is a bad guy tries to fuck with him and his family, so vengeance must be paid. What I have always loved about the Swagger series is how technical they are about gunnery and all matter of bullet calibers and what they do. I hate guns, and most people know this, but I do love a shooting video game and some books about guys exacting revenge. In real life, not so much, but I'll take the fiction versions just fine.

What sucks after 9 or so novels about the same man and his family is that, eventually, guys get older. Swagger is now an older fellow, but he still has the ability to whip some ass. It's just sad seeing characters age like this, because it's fiction damnit and I want what I want. Plus, Hunter has eluded to about a million other side stories and other life events that instead of writing about how Swagger's hip hurts all the time and he's not as nimble and all that jazz ... hey, how about writing a book about all those crazy missions you keep referring to? Ugh, so frustrating.

Anyway, Night of Thunder was not my favorite, if only because the main narrative centered around a NASCAR event, and if there is anything I hate more than guns, it is NASCAR, and they are not mutually exclusive. So this was not the best setting for me to enjoy a good Bob Lee Swagger tale. Luckily the book was still filled with classic Swagger moments and one-liners, enough to keep me anticipating the next book that comes down the line.