Read @ Joe’s

Title: G-Man (2017)  
Author: Stephen Hunter 
Publisher: G.P. Putnam's Sons  

Book jacket: The Great Depression was marked by an epidemic of bank robberies and Tommy-gun-toting outlaws who became household names. Hunting them down was the new U.S. Division of Investigation--soon to become the FBI--which was determined to nab the most dangerous gangster this country has ever produced: Baby Face Nelson. To stop him, the Bureau recruited talented gunman Charles Swagger, World War I hero and sheriff of Polk County, Arkansas.

Joe says: Somewhere within this concrete block of a novel there lays a cool, fast story of historical fiction playing out a hard-as-balls Agent and his hunt of a willy, rascal of a bank-robber. To find that story, brother, break out the chisels and jackhammers.

Somewhere within this concrete block of a novel, under the preposterously-macho dialogue, away from the run-on sentences filled with description upon description upon description, not to mention the chapters worth of the intricacies involved with the breaking down of firearms, there lays a cool, fast story of historical fiction playing out a hard-as-balls Agent and his hunt of a willy, rascal of a bank-robber. To find that story, brother, break out the chisels and jackhammers, as it’s a deep dig.

G-Man places the fictional character of Charles Swagger right into the state of play between the burgeoning FBI and a series of public enemies on the prowl in the early 1930s, such as the likes of John Dillinger and Baby-Face Nelson. Author Stephen Hunter adds to this narrative a present-day tale of Swagger’s grandson, Bob, and his quest to uncover the mystery of his grandfather. Both tales, alone and intertwined, make for great pulp, crime fiction. Hunter unfortunately burdens that plot, something that should be hip, and light, and full of that post-1920s swing, with the procedurals of an old man telling a young whippersnapper the right way a task should be done.

Maybe this is simply Hunter’s style that I, as the reader and reviewer, have not previously been privy to. However, as a reader and reviewer, I found his unyielding verbiage to be unnecessarily weighty, making for a dull read. And a book release from an author named Hunter, featuring a character named Swagger, and with the cover boasting a fedora-clad agent bearing down with a Tommy gun, should be anything but dull.

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A hail of bullets in thanks to NetGalley for the ARC.