Front Sight: Three Swagger Novellas

The excellent latest from Pulitzer winner Hunter (Basil’s War) showcases three generations of the crime-fighting Swagger family in stylistically diverse tales of violence and corruption. In “City of Meat”—an exercise in social realism that recalls Upton Sinclair—Charles Swagger, the federal agent who shot John Dillinger, investigates a narcotics ring being run out of the Chicago Union Stock Yards in 1934, whose latest product could prove disastrous. “Johnny Tuesday” is a hyperviolent, noir-tinged shoot-’em-up in which Charles’s son, Earl, probes an unsolved bank robbery in 1947 Chesterfield, Md. The collection concludes with “Five Dolls for the Gut Hook,” an homage to the “giallo” Italian slasher films of the 1970s that finds Earl’s son, Bob Lee Swagger, accepting an assignment from an Arkansas police department to investigate a series of brutal murders. Existing fans will be delighted by the amount of character development and action Hunter packs into these novellas, while new readers will find them a perfect entry point into the Swagger universe. Hunter is at the top of his game. Agent: Esther Newberg, CAA. (Jan.)