Time to Hunt

A sniper fires at Bob Lee Swagger and hits his wife instead. The shot was meant for him, and he is pulled back into professional hunting and investigation to learn who wanted him dead and why.

The trail leads to a conspiracy involving a Russian sniper and a military cover-up decades old. The story runs on two timelines, one in the Vietnam War of the 1970s and one in the present, and the two threads close in on each other.

This is a military, espionage and crime novel more than a straight thriller. It moves as a slow-build procedural, with the detail given to ballistics and tactics. Bob's marriage is under strain, and the book treats it that way. There is no romance plot.

Violence is graphic: gunfights, the sniper's shot, a fatal wound. Dry, understated humor surfaces in Bob's dialogue and in the camaraderie of the flashbacks, easing a tense, dark mood. Betrayal runs through both eras, and Bob has to find where it began.