THE BULLET GARDEN

Earl Swagger’s heroics are let loose in the deadly fields of World War II France.

After D-Day, Allied forces take heavy casualties from snipers in France’s rolling hills and farmland checkered with mazes of hedgerows and brush fences. The French call the area the bocage, but the troops know it as “the bullet garden.” One relatively lucky soldier takes a shot in the hip: “Man, did he go down, full of spangles and fire flashes and lightning bugs and flies’ wings.” Worse, as many as 1,500 men take slugs right beneath the helmet and behind the ear, ripping through the brain. The enemy has a marksman who is so good that it doesn't matter what you're doing: “If he fires you're dead.” The Allied army and the Office of Strategic Services decide to find their own best sharpshooter to hunt the sniper down. They pick Marine Gunnery Sgt. Earl Swagger, already a veteran of Guadalcanal, Bougainville, and Tarawa, with a hard-earned reputation as a war god, of always being right, knowing everything, fearing nothing, and having been “born so brave bullets were afraid of him.” So he becomes an army major for his stint in Europe, and he begins his hunt. At the site of one killing, a soldier sneezes, and that of all things gives Swagger a clue on the road to finding his prey. The author offers up great descriptions that invite the reader to fill in the blanks: “No one would call him handsome; no one would call him ugly. He was simply a Marine.” The hero isn’t given to chitchat or emotion, and there isn’t a maudlin molecule in his body. That’s all to the good for a man of the gun. The villain gets to show his personality, showing a flicker of humanity as he remembers a lost love—but he’s a killer at his core. If he isn’t killing, he isn’t living. Meanwhile, there’s a spy plot set in London, where the slimy Mr. Raven lurks in the nighttime with a scarf covering his deviated septum. The story is loaded with colorful characters, crisp dialogue, bullets, and blood.

Tense, smart, fast-moving action starring the future father of Hunter's Bob Lee Swagger.