Pale Horse Coming, Stephen Hunter
Pale Horse Coming, Stephen Hunter
12 Rating(s)
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Pale Horse Coming

Author: Stephen Hunter

Narrator: Eric G. Dove

Unabridged: 16 hr 49 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 04/10/2012

Synopsis

It’s 1951. The Thebes State Penal Farm in Mississippi is 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 who, with great misgivings, accepts a job to investigate a disappearance. Before he leaves on this dangerous trip, he confesses his fears to his former investigator Earl Swagger, 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.What they encounter there is something beyond their wildest imagining of evil. The dying black town is ruled by white deputies on horseback who are more like an occupying army and the only escape is over the wild currents of the dark river that drowns as many people as it liberates. But nothing in town compares to the prison. Run by an aging madman with insane theories of racial purity, it is administered by a brutal 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 the question: What does a man do when confronted with evil?

About Stephen Hunter

Stephen Hunter has written fifteen novels. The retired chief film critic for The Washington Post, where he won the 2003 Pulitzer Prize for Distinguished Criticism, he has also published two collections of film criticism and a nonfiction work. He lives in Maryland.

Reviews

Goodreads review by Mark on January 15, 2013

"Pale Horse Coming" is Stephen Hunter's finest hour. While he is an excellent author who never fails to entertain, most of his other work pales in comparison to this masterpiece which is essentially a retelling of "The Magnificent Seven" filtered through Hunter's mega-macho and gun-centric writing t......more

Goodreads review by Liralen on August 01, 2011

Mythic and elegant and poetical in language, though deadly earnest in its violence and means of dealing with violence, this book just touched me on all kinds of levels more than just the "thriller". It seamlessly blends the myths of the Deep Dark South with that of the cowboy and fast shooters of th......more

Goodreads review by Steve on July 21, 2023

This has got to be one of my favorite Stephen Hunter books as well as one of my favorite reads. I am a sucker for the old "Magnificent Seven" set-up - which Stephen Hunter uses in this novel with amazing ease. Definitely will raise your testosterone level after a single reading. You will begin to sm......more

Goodreads review by Quinn on February 13, 2009

I would describe this book as the movies Missing in Action, The Pelican Brief and the Magnificent Seven all rolled into one fantastic story. I picked this book up at a thrift store because it looked interesting. I was greatly surprised. This is a terrific book, with well developed characters. I real......more

Goodreads review by Marti on February 28, 2010

This is a very violent book. Part of the violence is to right an injustice where, in the Mississippi of 1951, there is a horrible prison for black men called Thebes State Penal Farm, located in the swamps, almost impossible to reach, except by water. A lawyer friend of Earl Swagger goes there to get......more

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