Time to Hunt

A sniper's bullet intended for Bob Lee Swagger hits his wife instead, and he's forced back into the world of professional hunting and investigation to find out why. The dual-timeline structure (1970s Vietnam War and the present) is a signature Hunter device, and the book is a slow-build procedural built around ballistics, tactics, and a conspiracy involving a Russian sniper and a decades-old military cover-up — hence the military/espionage/crime genre mix rather than pure thriller. Moods lean tense and dark because of the violence and the conspiracy, but the book also has a wry, understated humor in Bob's dialogue and the flashback's camaraderie. No romance or romance-adjacent content is depicted; the relationship between Bob and his wife is portrayed as a marriage under strain, not a love story. Violence is graphic and depicted in detail (gunfights, a sniper's bullet, a fatal wound), and the plot centers on a conspiracy and a cover-up, justifying the conspiracy and betrayal tropes.