1. As best I can recall, Ray Cruz began as a weekend pass for Bob Lee Swagger while he was raking up kills in Vietnam in Time to Hunt. I think he also has a bit of a cameo in Dead Zero, but I could be wrong on that. I don't remember exactly where Cruz and Swagger first meet up.
2. Nikki Swagger, Bob Lee's daughter, shows up in the books that have current day story line. She was front and center in Days of Thunder as a reporter in Bristol, TN. Here, she's working for the Minneapolis news media and ends up on network for her work on the hostage crisis in this book. Nick Memphis, the FBI agent (now assistant Director) appears in some way or another in all the Bob Lee books.
3. My partner in crime here at MRB, West Coast Don, forgot to mention a critical character in this book. The hostage crisis response by the Minnesota State Police is being run by their newly appointed head dog. Colonel Douglas Obobo is the first African-American superintendent of the state police. "He had the gift of inspiration, of making people believe, first in him, second in the mission, and third in the larger program that sustained the mission and in the administrative entity that embraced all." Son of a Kenyan grad student at Harvard and a Radcliffe anthropology major. He himself graduated from Harvard and Harvard Law. Joined the Boston PD as a beat cop then the Homicide Squad. A cop who 'never broke a case, arrested a suspect, won a gunfight, led a raid, or testified in court.' Next up was as the lead investigator for a Senate committee, then ass't commish of the Baltimore PD, chief in Omaha, now in Minnesota. On the fast track to be head of the FBI. He wins people, good and bad, with praise, compassion, and empathy. The days of the neanderthals are gone, he can reason with anybody. Hmmm. Bet you can't guess who Hunter modeled this character after. Read one interview where Hunter was stumbling with the story, but said once he had a handle on the Obobo character, the book wrote itself.
4. If books have a background theme, I'm going to go out on a limb and guess that Hunter tends to drift pretty far to the right side of the aisle, and this book is about how those who follow a charismatic leader like Obobo are ill prepared for the eventual time where the shit really hits the fan and the neanderthals like Cruz are what stands between good and evil, saying to evil, "you're gonna have to go through me" while the charismatic types grab their coat and run for cover to plot the spin for the adoring media.
5. As WCDon said, this book just flies. Could easily be a cover-to-cover, one sitting read. It's that gripping. It grabs your gut in the first chapter and loosens up only after the last jihadist is dead. Don't forget to breathe. As expected, Hunter stays near the top of my power rotation.
East Coast Don
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