34 of 35 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A Fast Paced Action Thriller, October 22, 1998
By A Customer
Master Sniper
Murder, conspiracy, Nazis, and guns. If any of those words spark a flame of interest in your mind Master Sniper is a must read. Master Sniper is a novel of twisted murder conspiracies, evil bad guys, and any good novel isn't great without a World War II setting. I personally would recommend this book to any action book fan. This is by far the best book ever written by Stephen Hunter. Set back into the time of Nazi Germany, when Hitler and swing music were dominating the planet. In a German concentration camp a Jewish poet is being held captive, working 16 hours a day just to stay alive. One night they are led into a field in the heart of the Black Forest in Germany. One by one the Jewish prisoners are being sniped. The poet realizes what is happening and tries to escape. He succeeds. In London an American Sargent discovers a new weapon that can snipe better than any other weapon known to man, and with it the Germans can snipe even Eisenhower himself. But the target isn't Eisenhower, it's some one bigger the Eisenhower. Through out the story Leets, the American Sargent discovers more than he ought to know about the Reich. I personally would recommend this book to any one who loves to read historical fiction. I was first drawn to this book because it sounded like an action thriller that would sustain me through an 8-hour long plane ride. Then when I had read it I realized that it had more depth. This is the best novel ever written by Stephen Hunter. There really aren't many details about the book that are bad. Some good parts about the book are that one, the book is realistically placed (in time, setting, and character opinions.) in relation to the time period. In Conclusion, this book is a great, must read novel that deserves five out of five stars.
-Sean Villard
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17 of 18 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
War in the Pacific is not the only theater he wrote about, November 10, 2004
This is not another Bob Lee Swagger tale, although it is about a sniper. Not a Marine Corps sniper, but a Wermacht sniper, in the last days of World War II. Apparently, Stephen Hunter likes to "reach out and touch someone" in his stories. He does a lot of stories based on snipers.
Hunter, by the way, spent his military service in the Army, not the Marine Corps. His bio does not discuss his Army experience, but he has encyclopedic knowledge about firearms, and if he makes a statement about a given model of firearm, or its ballistics, you can bet that he's done his research. He's done a lot of reading on the subject, but how much experience he has, again, is a questionmark. Not, I think, a competitive shooter.
This tale looks at the Office of Strategic Services (reinvented as the CIA) of "Wild Bill" Donovan during WWII, (much like Claire Chennault's Civil Air Transpory was reborn as Air America, the CIA outfit) and the Brit intelligence apparatus, for part of its setting. I was interested to see, again, a reference to Ernest Hemingway--not too flattering. He was also in Hunter's novel, Havana--drunk there, too. I wonder what Hunter has against Papa? Apparently just doesn't like him. I always did.
Another theme in this book is a strong current of sympathy for the Jewish people--not that they didn't deserve it, but I have noticed in Hunter's other books an almost obsessiveness about showing how badly treated were the blacks in the old South. He does seem to get caught up in these matters, a champion of the "underdog", although he uses variations on the "n-word" freely throughout all of his books, and I've read several of them.
These are not just fault-finding comments. Stephen Hunter is currently my favorite author in his genre, as I've said before. He's a wonderful storyteller. But, I think I've accurately detected both his political bent and his agenda, if he has one besides simply writing great stories. He's that rarity, a liberal who knows something about firearms, and may even be infatuated with them. I wish him well, and hope he continues to write great novels to a ripe old age.
Joseph (Joe) Pierre, USN (Ret)
author of Handguns and Freedom...their care and maintenance
and other books
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10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Not what I expected, October 13, 2004
After reading "Point of Impact," I was really excited about diving into this Hunter work about a German soldier, Repp, skilled in long range shooting, who is on a dangerous mission and has in his possession a very dangerous state of the art weapon to fulfill it.
The book gets a little confusing because there are so many German towns, phrases, organizations, etc that it becomes hard to keep track of them througout the reading. Also, the romantic scene between the hero who hunts down Repp, Leets, and a nurse becomes more distracting and really has no relevance to the story. The action scenes were quite entertaining, however, and the book was hard to put down in the last 100 pages.
It was a decent book but I think I'll stick with the "Swagger" series from now on.
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