Hunter With A Sword

A staple of the American crime novel - indeed much of American literature - is the lone tough hombre, the fearless hero who will go it alone against hopeless odds.

Since the hard-boiled private eye novel has its roots in the Western, its antecedents come from the mold of the heroes of "High Noon," "Shane," and "3:10 to Yuma." They find their doppelgängers in the works of Dashiell Hammett, Mickey Spillane, James Crumley and, among many others, Stephen Hunter.

Mr. Hunter's hero, Bob Lee Swagger, isn't so much a detective as a one-man wrecking crew, especially in his latest adventure, "The 47th Samurai" (Simon & Schuster, 368 pages, $26), in which he finds himself in a hospital bed after several days of unconsciousness, not once but twice.

Although this is a novel of action, it has many quiet moments in which such concepts as honor, obligation, vengeance, and the meaning of death are considered with great seriousness. Much is made of the differences between the American way of mulling over these abstract notions and the greater intensity with which they are a part of Japanese life and spirit.

The story begins with a World War II battle in the Pacific in which two men, a Japanese and an American, both behave heroically. The American survives and is awarded the Medal of Honor; he is Bob Lee Swagger's father, Earl, who came home to become a cop and starred in three of Mr. Hunter's previous novels. The Japanese soldier dies. More than a half-century later, his son, also a soldier, travels to Idaho to ask Bob about the sword his father carried onto the battlefield, as so many Japanese soldiers did. Bob tracks it down and flies to Japan to return it to its rightful place. After being warmly welcomed by the family, Bob prepares to return to his wife in Idaho when he learns from an airport television screen that the entire Japanese family has been murdered and their house burned to the ground.

He feels it is his duty to track down the killers and avenge his new friend's death. Bob doesn't return to his wife but instead takes a single room on the West Coast to immerse himself in the ways of the samurai, reading books, watching videos of even the most obscure samurai motion picture, and eating sushi (and what greater dedication could one show than deciding to drink tea and eat raw fish for a 5:00 a.m. breakfast?).

Against the objections of his own family and the American embassy, Bob sneaks back into Japan to begin the hunt, eventually taking a week-long lesson in swordplay (though what he learns has as much to do with play as does amputating your own leg).

Fight scenes soon follow, and Mr. Hunter writes them as well as, or better, than anyone in the business, but one has to be willing to shift into a James Bond mind-set and suspend disbelief at this point, not being overly demanding of hard-core reality. It is a violent book, and I swear I smelled the blood that flowed and gushed so generously on so many pages.

There is a strong and comforting sense of morality in Mr. Hunter's heroes. Bob Lee Swagger, known as "Bob the Nailer" for his 87 sniper kills in Vietnam, has no qualms about killing bad people, but he doesn't want to; he knows that sometimes he just has to. A lot of that attitude came from his father, Earl, and Bob has spent a great deal of his life trying to live up to the standards of his old man.

The 1945 scenes in "The 47th Samurai" that involve Earl and his equally honorable Japanese adversary expertly show off his character, giving readers even greater insight to the hero of "Hot Springs" (2000), "Pale Horse Coming" (2001), and "Havana" (2003), all of which are strongly recommended.

So, too, are the earlier adventures of Bob Lee: "Point of Impact" (1993), "Black Light" (1996) and "Time to Hunt" (1998). The first title was filmed this year as "Shooter," directed by Antoine Fuqua (whose major previous credit was "Training Day") and starring Mark Wahlberg.

Winner of the Pulitzer Prize in 2003 for his film criticism for the Washington Post, Mr. Hunter is a far more graceful prose stylist than most of his contemporaries in the male action thriller genre. I have only one major problem with Mr. Hunter: He doesn't write often enough.

Mr. Penzler is the proprietor of the Mysterious Bookshop in Manhattan and the series editor of the annual "Best American Mystery Stories." He can be reached at ottopenzler@mysteriousbookshop.com.