Finished Pale Horse Coming by Stephen Hunter. This is another one of his Southern thrillers about the Swagger family. In the interest of full disclosure, I actually work with Hunter’s daughter, although we are in different departments of the newspaper.

This book is about Earl Swagger, an Arkansas policeman who journeys down to Thebes, Mississippi, to rescue his friend/father figure/lawyer Sam Vincent. Sam went to Thebes to get some legal documents from the infamous prison and realized there was something very wrong with the prison/town. Rather than let him leave, the town sheriff framed Sam for murder and is about to let him have a deadly “accident” when Earl comes along to rescue Sam.

Sam escapes, but Earl doesn’t. Earl is taken to the Thebes prison, where he’s tortured, beaten, and more. Earl eventually manages to escape the prison and its horrid conditions, and he decides to gather up a posse of men, go back to Thebes, and burn the place to the ground. There’s a pale horse coming to Thebes, and his name is Earl Swagger …

This book is hard to classify. It’s a rescue mission meets The Great Escape meets The Magnificent Seven. But it’s all done beautifully. This is definitely one of Hunter’s better Swagger books (although not quite as good as Point of Impact).

The beginning drags a bit, but once Earl is captured, the plot really kicks into high gear. I particularly enjoyed the scenes where Earl travels across the country and gathers up his crew of old gunmen. Plus, there was a secondary character with a secret motive I didn’t even guess, and it worked in well with the rest of the action.

If you like action-adventure thrillers with lots of talk about guns and weapons, especially those set in the steamy South, you should enjoy this one. Thumbs up.

Note: One thing I do want to mention is that the action is set in 1951 in the South — a time of racial turmoil to say the least. The N-word is used a lot in this book, among other things. I’m not saying it’s right — just how some people spoke/thought at the time and that Hunter is trying to capture the era to tell his story. But if that bothers you, you might want to skip this one.

Up next: Quantum of Solace (a book of James Bond short stories) by Ian Fleming.

Books in my TBR pile: About 18.