Earl Swagger
1 primary work • 3 total works
Book 3
High summer in Cuba, 1953, and Havana gleams with possibility. Flush with booming casinos, sex, and drugs, Havana is a lucrative paradise for everyone from the Mafia and United Fruit to pimps, porn-makers, and anyone looking to grab a piece of the action - including the Cuban government, which naturally honours the interests of its old ally, the United States of America. Of course, where there's paradise, trouble can't be far behind. Trouble, in this case, makes its entrance in the terrifically charismatic and silver-tongued form of a young revolutionary named Fidel Castro. The Caribbean is fast becoming a strategic Cold War hub, and Soviet intelligence has taken Castro under its wing. The CIA's response is to send the one man capable of eliminating Castro: the legendary gunfighter and ex-Marine hero Earl Swagger, who proved his lethal talent in Stephen Hunter's previous bestsellers Hot Springs and Pale Horse Coming. In Cuba, Earl finds himself up to his neck in treacherous ambiguity, where the old rules about honour and duty don't apply, and where Earl's target seems to have more guts and good luck than anyone else in Cuba.
The summer of 1946. Haunted by memories of his experiences in the blood-soaked Pacific War and of his abusive father, ex-marine Earl Swagger believes himself almost beyond redemption: an angry man with nowhere to go in the post-war peace. But there is a new war, within America's heartland: the war against organised crime. Recruited by the District Attorney in Hot Springs, Arkansas to take on the Mob head to head, Earl and his team of rookie cops find they have to do battle not only with heavily armed mobsters but also with politicians. No one anywhere is to be trusted.
The Year is 1951. A smooth-talking Chicago lawyer has come to chat with Sam Vincent, a former prosecutor, about a dangerous unknown - a prison for violent black convicts in Thebes, Mississippi, a place of many questions but no answers. Would Sam, a white man and a Southerner, be willing to investigate? When Sam vanishes in the mists and swamps, his old friend Earl Swagger packs his gun and heads to Thebes where he discovers sinister secrets that go far beyond the prison walls. The whole town guards itself from nosy strangers with a private army of brutal, gun-toting, Klan-type thugs and rednecks. After barely escaping, Earl vows to right things and reclaim Thebes from the throes of a sinister conspiracy. But first, he enlists just a little help from his friends. Featuring the same fast-paced action and page-turning thrills that made Hot Springs a heart-stopping bestseller, Pale Horse Coming is a triumphant successor.