THE 47th SAMURAI: A Bob Lee Swagger Novel
Stephen Hunter
Simon & Schuster
Thriller
ISBN: 9780743238090

The first Stephen Hunter novel I read was DIRTY WHITE BOYS, a tale written with such stark realism that to this day, as the result of a long descriptive passage in that book, I cannot eat in a restaurant unless I am facing the door. All of Hunter's work --- from HAVANA to HOT SPRINGS to POINT OF IMPACT to BLACK LIGHT --- is infused with an immediacy that is the stuff of waking nightmare, where death is a constant visitor whose knock on the door is but a moment away. This is especially true of THE 47th SAMURAI, Hunter's latest novel and arguably his best.

Hunter has been busily constructing the mythos of the Swaggers, a father and son who neither seek nor practice violence for its own sake but invoke its use in the name of nobility. The events of THE 47th SAMURAI have their origin in great part as the result of an encounter on the Pacific island of Iwo Jima on February 21, 1945. On that day Hideki Yano, a captain in the Japanese Imperial Army, met U.S. Marine Gunnery Sergeant Earl Swagger in pitched battle at close quarters. Only Earl Swagger survived at the conclusion. Some 60 years later, their sons, Philip Yano and Bob Lee Swagger, meet in an Idaho field. Yano has journeyed to the United States to honor his father's heroism by recovering his sword, which was lost on that long-ago field of battle. Swagger, restlessly dealing day by day in uneasy retirement, makes Yano's quest his own. Though Swagger does not have the sword in his possession, he goes to extraordinary lengths to recover it and then to personally deliver it to Yano in Japan.

Let us digress here for a moment. Hunter's description of Swagger's efforts, told with an economy of words and a matter-of-fact narration, imbibe his character with a nobility and morality rarely encountered in fiction of any genre these days. Swagger does not consider his actions out of the ordinary or even exemplary; he is simply doing what a soldier does to honor the memory of another. What neither Swagger nor Yano understands, however, is that the sword in question is not possessed of an ordinary blade but is rather a legendary artifact whose existence goes to the heart of Japanese history and culture.

Swagger, honoring the legacies of Yano's father and his own, finds himself suddenly at the epicenter of a series of horrific crimes instigated by the yakuza underworld, for whom no crime is too dark or unthinkable if it will result in possession of the blade. A plain-spoken man with the soul of a warrior, Swagger finds himself tossed into the heart of an alien culture and language of which he knows little but with which he shares a great deal in spirit. As he gives himself over to the warrior spirit of the Samurai, Swagger heads into a cataclysmic encounter from which he cannot emerge unscathed but must not avoid if his honor is to survive intact.

Hunter's preparation for the writing of THE 47th SAMURAI involved far more than research into Japanese culture. The realism, the history and the understanding that informs the tale from first page to last required nothing short of immersion. The author's greatest research, however, is on display in the discussion of the sword, the penultimate Samurai weapon that has affected the history and culture of Japan to an extent and degree that the Western mind is barely capable of understanding. His breadth of knowledge is so mesmerizing that one almost loses sight of the fact that the story possesses a symmetry that combines the best qualities of Eastern and Western culture as well. Put this one on your "must-read" list.

    --- Reviewed by Joe Hartlaub

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