Pale Horse Coming (Earl Swagger Series #2) » (Bargain)

Stephen Hunter has written 16 novels. The retired chief film critic for The Washington Post, where he won the 2003 Pulitzer Prize for Distinguished Criticism, he has also published two collections of film criticism and a nonfiction work, American Gunfight. He lives in Baltimore, Maryland.

It's 1951, and the last place in America any sane man wishes to visit is Thebes State Penal Farm (Colored) in Thebes, Mississippi. Up a dark river, surrounded by swamps and impenetrable woods, it's the Old South at its most brutal -- a place of violence, racial terror, and even more horrific rumors. Of the few who make the journey, black or white, even fewer return.

But in that year, two men travel to Thebes. The first is Sam Vincent, the former prosecuting attorney of Polk County, Arkansas, who has agreed to investigate a disappearance. Before Sam leaves on this dangerous trip, he confesses his fears to Earl Swagger -- a sergeant with the Arkansas State Police. Earl pledges that if Sam is not back by a certain time, he will come looking for him. Sam brings his knowledge of the law and his sense of the rational to Thebes, but Earl brings his guns.

Both Sam and Earl are challenged to the limits of their strength by this prison and struggle with deep questions: What does a man...

Publishers Weekly

Earl Swagger, the gritty WWII-vet hero of Hunter's bestselling thriller Hot Springs, is back in this virtually un-put-downable gothic chiller about unspeakable evil in the murky Mississippi bayous. In 1951, five years after the conclusion of Hot Springs, straight arrow ex-county prosecutor Sam Vincent tells Earl - his trusted friend and former investigator, now a sergeant in the Arkansas state police - that he has been hired by a Chicago attorney to travel to Thebes, a mythic prison camp in the remote backwaters of Mississippi to verify the death of a black man who is the beneficiary of a will left by a one-time employer. When Earl hasn't heard from Sam by an agreed upon date, he goes looking for him and discovers that he is being held in the prison. Earl frees Sam, but is taken prisoner himself. Tortured by the prison hierarchy who fear he has been sent by a federal agency to expose their abominable secrets, Earl, aided by a trusty, escapes, vowing to return to destroy the camp and kill its evil warden and his henchmen. A staunch upholder of the law, self-righteous Sam refuses to participate in Earl's plan for retribution, but promises not to interfere. Assembling a strike force of seven of the country's most able gunmen, Earl sets out to wipe Thebes from the face of the earth. Meanwhile, probing the fate of a famous doctor who worked for the military researching biological warfare during WWII, Sam realizes Thebes may harbor an even darker secret after a bomb attempt on his life. Unforgettable characters in vivid settings more than offset the melodramatic, credibility stretching scenarios of the hard-driving thriller. Once again, Hunter proves he is a master of the cinematic prose. Agent, Esther Newberg, ICM. (Oct. 12). Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information.