A good friend recommended to me The Third Bullet, from the Bob Lee Swagger books by author Stephen Hunter. The recommendation came with the assurance that I wouldn't need to check out any of the preceding seven books, and so I didn't. I didn't even know until I was well into the book that the main character actually could have been knowable to me: Mark Wahlberg played him in the 2007 movie Shooter, while Ryan Phillipe portrayed him in the just-cancelled three-season TV series of the same name. (I haven't seen any of that, but there's a chance I could have.)
Swagger is a retired Marine sniper who gets into adventures that center around guns and marksmanship. But The Third Bullet wasn't recommended to me with the expectation that I'd be drawn to any of that. It was for the intriguing premise of this particular story, built around the assassination of John F. Kennedy. This was no mad Grassy Knoll fever dream built around a "magic bullet"; this was a more considered fiction woven by a man steeped in ballistics and marksmanship, who actually ruminated for two decades about having his fictional hero "solve the JFK assassination."
The plotting is actually extremely clever. Hunter isn't really spinning a 100%-new conspiracy; by this point, it would be hard to pitch something credible that countless others hadn't already considered. Still, if you're going to ride for a theory of the case other than the official Warren Commission answer, this is a good one that seems plausible, at least as Hunter writes it. (Without spoiling details, the theory is alluded to in the title -- that the third bullet, the final shot and not the second "magic" bullet, is the most illuminating of the truth.)
I found Hunter's premise considerably better than his writing, however. I found the book to be too drawn out and slow paced, and it isn't until a third of the way in that it becomes really engaging. That's because he changes up his writing technique one-third of the way in. After following Swagger in a conventional third person style for many meandering chapters (including a pointless trip to Russia), out of nowhere comes a chapter written in first person, a memoir from the man who orchestrated JFK's assassination. From there on, the book alternates chapters: third person of Swagger on the hunt with first person memoir excerpts from the "true killer." The Swagger stuff isn't terrible, but it certainly comes off that way alongside the more compelling confession.
I suppose you have to take my opinion with a healthy dose of salt. (A proverbial "grain" probably isn't enough.) I didn't read any of the previous seven Bob Lee Swagger books. I had no investment in that character, and hence that part of the book. Stephen Hunter, rightly perhaps, spends little time "developing" an already amply-developed character. So this may not be a fair criticism: but I'd much rather the book be stand-alone. Indeed, I think you could almost read it that way. I believe if you read only the "memoir" chapters, you'd not only get the best parts of the book, it would hold together quite coherently until it catches up to "present day" near the very end.
Indeed, that's probably what I'd recommend -- because I found The Third Bullet to be an A-grade book shuffled together with a D-grade one. I wouldn't quite average them in the middle, either, given the hefty total page count, and how long it takes before the best part begins. Overall, I'd give The Third Bullet a C+. If you're a fan of JFK conspiracies, you might check it out. (Most of it, anyway.) If you're a fan of Bob Lee Swagger (or Stephen Hunter), I'd be curious to know how it comes off to you. Everyone else, though, should probably steer clear.
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