Bob Lee Swagger is the protagonist of a 12-novel series by Stephen Hunter. They chronicle his life during and after the Vietnam War, beginning with Point of Impact (1993) and ending with Targeted (2022). The author is Stephen Hunter, creator of fourteen novels and chief film critic. He wrote for The Washington Post and won the 2003 Pulitzer Prize.
According to the creator, Swagger is based on USMC Scout Sniper Carlos Hathcock.
Bob Lee Swagger enlists in the Marines and goes on to have a successful career as a Marine Sniper. Bob Lee completed three tours in Vietnam as a Special Operations soldier. Here, he earned the name “Bob the Nailer” for his amazing talent with the rifle.
Bob Lee was discharged from the Marine Corps in 1975, suffering from a permanent handicap from a hip injury. To dull his depression, he became an alcoholic. This culminated at the end of his second marriage to his first wife. He retreats to a hermetic life on a family acreage near Blue Eye.
The events of the first book begin as he is approached by a secret group to prevent the President’s assassination. He has to kill a highly trained sniper, the same one who shot him.
Bob Lee Swagger is a real action-packed and spectacular series. He could be considered a “true American literary icon”. He undertakes some of the country’s most challenging and deadly missions.
One of the series’ most powerful features is that the aging Swagger is a flawed agent. He is frequently hampered by haste, delays in education and research, and the repercussions of hip replacements. This is where Mrs. McDowell comes into action. With her vigilance, reasoning, and compassion she takes the role of the series’ silent hero.
Bob Lee Swagger Books in order
- Point of Impact (1993)
- Black Light (1996)
- Time to Hunt (1998)
- The 47th Samurai (2007)
- Night of Thunder (2008)
- I, Sniper (2009)
- Dead Zero (2010)
- The Third Bullet (2013)
- Sniper’s Honor (2014)
- G-Man (2017)
- Game of Snipers (2019)
- Targeted (2022)
Similar books
- The Gray Man series by Mark Greaney follows Court Gentry, a former CIA operative, now an internationally hired assassin. The series spans 11 books.
- The Pike Logan series by Brad Taylor follows an operator on the Taskforce. His instincts and talents are unrivaled until personal tragedy altered his outlook on the world.
- The Peter Ash series by Nick Petrie is an explosive thriller starring Peter Ash. He is a veteran who finds that the demons of war aren’t easily left behind.
See also: Orphan X Books in Order.
Most recommended books of the series
- Game of Snipers (Bob Lee Swagger #11) (4.34 Goodreads score)
- Point of Impact (Bob Lee Swagger #1) (4.28 Goodreads score)
- Time to Hunt (Bob Lee Swagger #3) (4.27 Goodreads score)
- Targeted (Bob Lee Swagger #13) (4.20 Goodreads score)
- Black Light (Bob Lee Swagger #2) (4.15 Goodreads score)
Movie adaptations
- Shooter, starring Mark Wahlberg as Swagger, is based on the novel Point of Impact. The film is set in the present day, with many of the events modified to reflect the times.
- 2016 TV adaptation created by John Hlavinal, with Swagger played by Ryan Phillippe.
Latest releases
The latest releases in the Bob Lee Swagger universe include Targeted (Bob Lee Swagger #13) released in 2022 and Game of Snipers (Bob Lee Swagger #11), released in 2019.
Book summaries
Point of Impact (1993)
He was one the best Marine snipers in Vietnam. Today, twenty years later, disgruntled hero of an unheroic war, all Bob Lee Swagger wants to be left alone and to leave the killing behind.But with consummate psychological skill, a shadowy military organization seduces Bob into leaving his beloved Arkansas hills for one last mission for his country, unaware until too late that the game is rigged.The assassination plot is executed to perfection—until Bob Lee Swagger, alleged lone gunman, comes out of the operation alive, the target of a nationwide manhunt, his only allies a woman he just met and a discredited FBI agent.Now Bob Lee Swagger is on the run, using his lethal skills once more—but this time to track down the men who set him up and to break a dark conspiracy aimed at the very heart of America.
Black Light (1996)
On a remote Arizona ranch, a man who has known loss, fear, and war weeps for the first time since he was a child. His tears are for the father taken from him four decades before in a deadly shoot-out. And his grief will lead him back to the place where he was born, where his father died, and where a brutal conspiracy is about to explode.For Bob Lee Swagger, the world changed on that hot day in Blue Eye, Arkansas, when two local boys rode armed and wild in a ’55 Fairlane convertible. Swagger’s father, Earl, a state trooper, was investigating the brutal murder of a young woman that day. By midnight Earl Swagger lay dead in a deserted cornfield.Now Bob Lee wants answers. He wants to know the truth behind the shoot -out that took his father’s life, a mystery buried in forty years of lies. Because for Bob Lee Swagger, the killing didn’t end that day in Blue Eye, Arkansas. The killing had just begun . . .
Time to Hunt (1998)
He is the most dangerous man alive. He only wants to live in peace with his family, and forget the war that nearly killed him. . . .It’s not going to happen.Stephen Hunter’s epic national bestsellers, Point of Impact and Black Light, introduced millions of readers to Bob Lee Swagger, called “Bob the Nailer,” a heroic but flawed Vietnam War veteran forced twice to use his skills as a master sniper to defend his life and his honor. Now, in his grandest, most intensely thrilling adventure yet, Bob the Nailer must face his deadliest foe from Vietnam—and his own demons—to save his wife and daughter.During the latter days of the Vietnam War, deep in-country, a young idealistic Marine named Donny Fenn was cut down by a sniper’s bullet as he set out on patrol with Swagger, who himself received a grievous wound. Years later Swagger married Donny’s widow, Julie, and together they raise their daughter, Nikki, on a ranch in the isolated Sawtooth Mountains in Idaho. Although he struggles with the painful legacy of Vietnam, Swagger’s greatest wish—to leave his violent past behind and live quietly with his family—seems to have come true.Then one idyllic day, a man, a woman, and a girl set out from the ranch on horseback. High on a ridge above a mountain pass, a thousand yards distant, a calm, cold-eyed shooter, one of the world’s greatest marksmen, peers through a telescopic sight at the three approaching figures.Out of his tortured past, a mortal enemy has once again found Bob the Nailer. Time to Hunt proves anew why so many consider Stephen Hunter to be our best living thriller writer. With a plot that sweeps from the killing fields of Vietnam to the corridors of power in Washington to the shadowy plots of the new world order, Hunter delivers all the complex, stay-up-all-night action his fans demand in a masterful tale of family heartbreak and international intrigue—and shows why, for Bob Lee Swagger, it’s once again time to hunt.
The 47th Samurai (2007)
Bob Lee Swagger and Philip Yano are bound together by a single moment at Iwo Jima, 1945, when their fathers, two brave fighters on opposite sides, met in the bloody and chaotic battle for the island. Only Earl Swagger survived.More than sixty years later, Yano comes to America to honor the legacy of his heroic father by recovering the sword he used in the battle. His search has led him to Crazy Horse, Idaho, where Bob Lee, ex-marine and Vietnam veteran, has settled into a restless retirement and immediately pledges himself to Yano’s quest.Bob Lee finds the sword and delivers it to Yano in Tokyo. On inspection, they discover that it is not a standard WWII blade, but a legendary shin-shinto katana, an artifact of the nation. It is priceless but worth killing for. Suddenly Bob is at the center of a series of terrible crimes he barely understands but vows to avenge. And to do so, he throws himself into the world of the samurai, Tokyo’s dark, criminal yakuza underworld, and the unwritten rules of Japanese culture.Swagger’s allies, hard-as-nails, American-born Susan Okada and the brave, cocaine-dealing tabloid journalist Nick Yamamoto, help him move through this strange, glittering, and ominous world from the shady bosses of the seamy Kabukicho district to officials in the highest echelons of the Japanese government, but in the end, he is on his own and will succeed only if he can learn that to survive samurai, you must become samurai.As the plot races and the violence escalates, it becomes clear that a ruthless conspiracy is in place, and the only thing that can be taken for granted is that money, power, and sex can drive men of all nationalities to gruesome extremes. If Swagger hopes to stop them, he must be willing not only to die but also to kill.
Night of Thunder (2008)
Woe unto he who crosses Bob Lee Swagger, especially when his daughter’s life is at stake. Forced off the road and into a crash that leaves her in a coma, clinging to life, reporter Nikki Swagger had begun to peel back the onion of a Southern-fried-conspiracy bubbling with all the angst, resentment, and dysfunction that Dixie gangsters can muster. An ancient, violent crime clan, a possibly corrupt law enforcement structure, gunmen of all stripes and shapes, and deranged evangelicals rear their ugly heads and will live to rue the day they targeted the wrong man’s daughter. It’s what you call your big-time bad career move. All of it is set against the backdrop of excitement and insanity that only a weeklong NASCAR event can bring to the backwoods of a town as seemingly sleepy as Bristol, Tennessee.
I, Sniper (2009)
It takes a seasoned killer…Four famed ‘60s radicals are gunned down at long range by a sniper. All the evidence—timeline, ballistics, forensics, motive, means, and opportunity—points to Marine war hero Carl Hitchcock. Even his suicide. The case is almost too perfect.…to hunt one.Recruited by the FBI to examine the data, retired Marine sharpshooter Bob Lee Swagger penetrates the new technology of the secretive sniper world to unravel a sophisticated conspiracy run by his most ruthless adversary yet—a marksman whose keen intellect and pinpoint accuracy rival his own. But when the enemy and his deadly henchmen mistake Bob for the hunted, it’s clear that some situations call for a good man with a gun…and the guts to use it.
Dead Zero (2010)
A marine sniper team on a mission in tribal territories on the Afghan-Pakistan border, Whiskey 2-2 is ambushed by professionals using the latest high-tech shooting gear. Badly wounded, the team’s sole survivor, Gunnery Sergeant Ray Cruz, aka “the Cruise Missile,” is determined to finish his job. He almost succeeds when a mystery blast terminates his enterprise, leaving a thirty-foot crater where a building used to be—and where Sergeant Cruz was meant to be hiding.Months pass. Ray’s target, an Afghan warlord named Ibrahim Zarzi, sometimes called “The Beheader,” becomes an American asset in the region and beyond, beloved by State, the Administration, and the Agency. He arrives in Washington for consecration as Our Man in Kabul.And that brings Ray Cruz out of hiding.
The Third Bullet (2013)
Bob Lee Swagger is back in a thriller fifty years in the making . . . It’s not even a clue. It’s a whisper, a trace, a ghost echo, drifting down through the decades via chance connections so fragile that they would disintegrate in the puff of a breath. But it’s enough to get legendary former Marine sniper Bob Lee Swagger interested in the events of November 22, 1963, and the third bullet that so decisively ended the life of John F. Kennedy and set the stage for one of the most enduring controversies of our time.Swagger begins his slow night stalk through a much-traveled landscape. But he’s asking questions that few have asked before: Why did the third bullet explode? Why did Lee Harvey Oswald, about to become the most hunted man on earth, risk it all by returning to his rooming house to secure a pistol he easily could have brought with him? How could a conspiracy that went unpenetrated for fifty years have been thrown together in the two and a half days between the announcement of the president’s route and the assassination itself?As Bob investigates, another voice enters the narrative: knowing, ironic, almost familiar, that of a gifted, Yale-educated veteran of the CIA Plans Division. Hugh Meachum has secrets and the means and the will to keep them buried. When weighed against his own legacy, Swagger’s life is an insignificant expense—but to blunt the threat, he’ll first have to ambush the sniper.
Sniper’s Honor (2014)
Ludmilla “Mili” Petrova was once the most hunted woman on earth, having raised the fury of two of the most powerful leaders on either side of World War II: Joseph Stalin and Adolf Hitler. But Kathy Reilly of The Washington Post doesn’t know any of that when she encounters a brief mention of Mili in an old Russian propaganda magazine, and becomes interested in the story of a legendary, beautiful female sniper who seems to have vanished from history.Reilly enlists former marine sniper Bob Lee Swagger to parse out the scarce details of Mili’s military service. The more Swagger learns about Mili’s last mission, the more he’s convinced her disappearance was no accident—but why would the Russian government go to such lengths to erase the existence of one of their own decorated soldiers? And why, when Swagger joins Kathy Reilly on a research trip, is someone trying to kill them before they can find out?
G-Man (2017)
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.Eighty years later, Charles’s grandson Bob Lee Swagger uncovers a strongbox containing an array of memorabilia dating back to 1934–a federal lawman’s badge, a .45 automatic preserved in cosmoline, a mysterious gun part, and a cryptic diagram–all belonging to Charles Swagger. Bob becomes determined to find out what happened to his grandfather– and why his own father never spoke of Charles. But as he investigates, Bob learns that someone is following him–and shares his obsession.
Game of Snipers (2019)
When Bob Lee Swagger is approached by a woman who lost a son to war and has spent the years since risking all that she has to find the sniper who pulled the trigger, he knows right away he’ll do everything in his power to help her. But what begins as a favor becomes an obsession, and soon Swagger is back in the action, teaming up with the Mossad, the FBI, and local American law enforcement as he tracks a sniper who is his own equal…and attempts to decipher that assassin’s ultimate target before it’s too late.
Targeted (2022)
After his successful takedown of a dangerous terrorist, Bob Lee Swagger learns that no good deed goes unpunished. Summoned to court by the United States Congress, Swagger is accused of reckless endangerment by a hardheaded anti-gun congresswoman. But what begins as political posturing soon turns deadly when the auditorium where the committee is being held is attacked.Swagger, the congresswoman, and numerous bystanders and reporters are taken hostage by a group of violent operatives. Soon, the very people who had accused him are depending on him to save their lives. Trapped in the auditorium and still struggling with injuries from his last assignment, Swagger must rely on his instincts, his shooting skills, and the help of a mysterious rogue sniper on the outside in order to ensure that everyone makes it out alive.
