Pale Horse Coming [Audio Cassette]

Stephen Hunter (Author), William Dufris (Narrator)

Book Description

Publication Date: November 2002

In Pale Horse Coming the unforgettable Earl Swagger returns in a searing follow-up to Hot Springs, Stephen Hunter's New York Times bestselling novel. It once again demonstrates why Hunter has been called "the only modern writer who can lay claim to being Dashiell Hammett's immediate successor."

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 piney 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 will come to Thebes. The first is Sam Vincent, the former prosecuting attorney of Polk County, Arkansas. With great misgivings, Sam accepts a job from a smooth-talking Chicago lawyer to investigate a disappearance. Sam has heard of Thebes and knows that in the Negro culture he only imperfectly understands, the place has a special resonance of horror.

Sam is a careful man. Before he leaves on this dangerous trip, he confesses his fears to his former investigator Earl Swagger, a Marine hero on Iwo Jima, veteran of the mob wars in Hot Springs, and now a sergeant of the Arkansas State Police. Earl pledges that if Sam is not back by a certain time, he will come looking for him. Sam will bring his knowledge of the law, his compassion, and his sense of the rational to Thebes, but Earl will bring only his guns.

What they encounter there is something beyond their wildest imaginations for evil. The dying black town is ruled by white deputies on horseback who are more like an occupying army than a police force. Each citizen of the town is in debt to the Store, the one remaining civic institution, and the only escape is over the wild currents of the dark river that drowns as many people as it liberates.

But nothing in the town can prepare Earl for the prison itself where he becomes the first white inmate. It is a site of fear: Run by an aging madman with insane theories of racial purity, it is administered by a brutally efficient Stalin of a guard sergeant known as Bigboy. The convicts call him The Whip Man -- he can take a man's soul with his nine feet of braided catgut.

Both Sam and Earl will be challenged to the limits of their strength by this place and will struggle not only for their own survival, but with deeper questions: What does a man do when confronted with such evil? Can it be remedied? Can it be rectified, redirected, reformed?

Or must it just be destroyed? And if so, where would you find the men to destroy it?

Drawing on the oldest myths, classical and modern literature, popular culture at its most vigorous, and the Golden Age gun writers of the '50s, Pale Horse Coming is a stunning story of violence and retribution, written with the same high velocity of Hunter's classic thrillers Point of Impact, Dirty White Boys, Black Light, and Time to Hunt.

--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Medal of Honor winner Earl Swagger returns in a hard-hitting sequel to Stephen Hunter's best-selling Hot Springs, this time compelled by duty and friendship to follow his best friend, former Arkansas prosecutor Sam Vincent, to the most dangerous place in Mississippi. Sam has gone to Thebes, a prison for violent African American criminals, on a mission for a client. What he finds there is not only a travesty of justice, but a place where the inhumanity of the jailers is matched by the horrific secret research being carried out on helpless prisoners. Captured and tortured himself, Earl manages to escape, but in short order he's back, along with a hand-picked posse of aging sharpshooters who are eager to prove they've still got what it takes. They're also as intent as Earl is on unmasking the conspiracy and destroying the real criminals. Bloody, bullet-ridden, and brilliantly paced, this is Hunter at his explosive best. --Jane Adams --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From 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 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Audio Cassette
• Publisher: Sound Library (November 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0792727126
• ISBN-13: 978-0792727125
• Product Dimensions: 8.9 x 5.4 x 2.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.5 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (105 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #7,850,385 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Stephen Hunter won the 2003 Pulitzer Prize for Criticism as well as the 1998 American Society of Newspaper Editors Award for Distinguished Writing in Criticism for his work as film critic at The Washington Post. He is the author of several bestselling novels, including Time to Hunt, Black Light, Point of Impact, and the New York Times bestsellers Havana, Pale Horse Coming, and Hot Springs. He lives in Baltimore.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

18 of 19 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Simply outstanding!, November 14, 2001

By 

Timothy J. Kindler (Rochester, NY) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Pale Horse Coming (Hardcover)

Pale Horse Coming is classic Stephen Hunter -- an epic battle of good versus evil, the limits of human endurance, courage under fire, loyalty, and of course, guns. The story centers around two characters from Hunter's previous works -- Sam Vincent, gentleman lawyer, and Earl Swagger, WWII veteran and medal of honor winner. On behalf of a client, Vincent journeys deep into the wilderness of Mississippi to check on the status of a prisoner at Thebes State Prison - the location where the worst of the worst "colored" offenders are sent. Suspecting that he is walking into a dangerous situation, Vincent obtains the word of Swagger that he will come looking for Vincent if he does not return from Mississippi in a pre-specified duration. Of course, Vincent walks into something that is beyond even his worst nightmares, thus engaging Swagger in his pledge to follow Vincent. The story moves well, has lots of action, suspense, and frequent plot twists, while giving the author a forceful understanding of race relations in the deep South during the 1950's. If you have liked Hunter's previous works, you will enjoy this as well. It is a compelling page turner.

8 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Earl Swagger returns, December 17, 2002

By 

David W. Nicholas (Van Nuys, CA USA) - See all my reviews
(TOP 1000 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Pale Horse Coming (Mass Market Paperback)

Stephen Hunter made a name for himself the last decade or so with the Swagger novels. Three involve Bob Lee Swagger, a Marine sniper in Viet Nam who just wants to retire peacefully to his native Arkansas. Pale Horse Coming is the second involving Earl Swagger, Bob Lee's father, a Marine Medal of Honor winner from the Pacific War who has returned to Arkansas to be a State Trooper. In this installment, an old family friend, Sam Vincent, gets himself into more trouble than you'd think a simple country lawyer could, and winds up a prisoner in Thebes, Mississippi, at a prison for Blacks that is so horrific it even has the same sign over the entrance as Auschwitz. Earl breaks Sam out of the prison, but is himself captured in the process. We then follow Earl through the horror of this place in all of its manifestations. Eventually, Earl breaks out, recruits a group of gunmen, and returns to kill the guards and destroy the prison.

The beginning of the book is paced reasonably well, but you know something more is going to happen, so you are anticipating what's to come. Earl's incarceration in the prison was interminable for me after a while: I think this is the weak point of the book. Once he escapes, the recruiting of the gunmen, and their return to Thebes, are interesting, with the proviso that suspense isn't an issue here: these guys are so good that the guards and local police don't stand a chance, and are soon running. Only the main bad guy characters provide any challenge at all. I gather that you can sort of recognize some of the gunmen from the last third of the book as pastiches of real individuals: the only one most readers are likely to recognize is a rather obvious Audie Murphy. This is in keeping with Hunter's previous books: Bob Lee Swagger's rival sniper in Viet Nam in Point of Impact is based on a real individual.

Given all of that, this is still a fun book. The plot moves right along, and the author has a good time with his characters. You can tell he's enjoying this. There's a whole sequence at the beginning with the Mississippi police deciding that a lawyer from Blue Eye Arkansas is probably sophisticated and a Yankee, and that drew several chuckles from me. I enjoyed this book a great deal, and would recommend it.

10 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Hunter's best, October 22, 2001

By 

Deborah C. Richard (Washington, DC USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Pale Horse Coming (Hardcover)

If you've read Hunter before you'll recognize his archetypes: sergeants, bold, strong and taciturn, yakky old southern or western gunfighters, pretty young women, dastardly villains who deserve the whacking they get and how. And that's Hunter: cliches executed with such bravado they transcend their own triteness. In this one, our hero Earl Swagger is on a mission from God: he's encountered a place on earth that should be in hell, a viciously racist southern prison farm for black men, where oppression is the style of the day. And so Earl, surviving but just barely, goes to town: he recruites a magnificent seven or a seven samurai and goes to war.
Hunter is both playful and sadistic in this one. His vision of the prison, with its ordeals of torture and oppression, its sense of crushing doom, is quite convincing. At the same time, he's having fun evoking movies (from Kurosawa, Sturges and Peckinpah) and literary sources (from Aeschylus to Faulkner, with Conrad and Freddie Forsythe thrown in for good measure), and part of the fun is catching his allusions.
But the end result is extremely poweful narrative magic: you cannot put this sucker down until the end, and if you look, you'll see that it's 5 a.m., you have an 8 a.m. appointment, and you won't care.