YMMV / Bob Lee Swagger

• Ensemble Dark Horse: Many of the best-liked characters appear in less than half of the books, and often not even in leading roles.
  • Von Drehle the Majorly Awesome, anti-Nazi German paratrooper commander in Sniper’s Honor.
  • Simple Country Lawyer Sam Vincent.
  • Homer Van Meter’s Crouching Moron, Hidden Badass appearance in ‘’G-Man’’ is a nice addition to the mobsters.
  • Bob Lee’s Friendly Sniper allies from some of the later books, Chuck McKenzie and Nikolai Stronski.
  • From “The Day Before Midnight”, the Tunnel King’s Walls and Phuong.
  • Handicapped Badass and Tragic Villain Lon Scott.
  • Earl’s team of historical shootist Expy characters in Pale Horse Coming.
• Genius Bonus: A lot of the firearms lore in the book. For instance, when the first book talks about some of Lon Scott's used bullets The date and caliber of them indicate it was Scott who killed JFK, which is confirmed in a later book.
• Jerkass Woobie:
  • Lon Scott. The man is a sniper who kills an Archbishop and JFK but he’s spent most of his life in a wheelchair after his own father shot him in a hunting accident (and later committed suicide) and in The Third Bullet is shown being goaded into Killing Kennedy despite strong attempts to resist with an appeal about how the war in Vietnam Kennedy is starting will put more men in wheelchairs like him, only for that killing to be All for Nothing.
  • Walls in The Day Before Midnight is a pimp and drug dealer whose initially reluctant to help save the world, but he is a Shell-Shocked Veteran who lost his brother to gang violence, put up with a lot of racism when he came back from Vietnam and gets a redemption arc of sorts.
• Magnificent Bastard:
  • Hugh Meachum is a CIA black ops specialist who oversaw the assassination of John F Kennedy in the name of stopping the Vietnam War. Having concocted the plan to do so on the fly, Meachum displays great ingenuity in tactics, charisma in persuading his accomplices and nobility in lamenting pointless deaths caused by his assassin. Desiring to stop the spread of Communism after America does enters the Vietnam War, Meachum becomes involved in increasingly ruthless murders, as he builds up resources and even fakes his own death when the government catches on to him. After settling into his new identity, he draws his enemies in with leaked fake conspiracy theories, observing who goes to investigate them. A man of (some) honor who values his men and respects Bob Lee, Meachum even dies confessing his worst betrayals, refusing to die with them kept secret.
  • Anto Grogan from I, Sniper is a brutal ex-SAS sniper turned contract killer who plots a series of murders to mask his actual target, throwing investigators off his trail for most of the novel. When Swagger arrives in disguise, Grogan feigns being fooled and gives false information to send Bob Lee on a chase implicating innocent parties. Kidnapping Bob Lee to torture him as he closes in on him, Grogan attempts to rationalize his client's actions with apparent conviction, shows some admiration for Bob Lee's refusal to crack, and meets his end boldly facing Bob Lee in a final Sniper Duel.
  • In G-Man, Braxton and Rawley Grumley are a pair of Southern-Fried Genius bounty hunters hired to find an antique machine gun. They expertly track Swagger and Nick's progress as they also pursue the gun and become good at ferreting out useful information ahead of the two heroes. The Grumley brothers have a reputation for resorting to brutal methods in pursuit of a quarry, but find themselves admiring Swagger due to his status as a war hero and resolve to use non-fatal tactics to overpower him and take the machine gun. When Swagger and Nick capture them, they walk away with the machine gun, their freedom, and no hard feelings on either side by offering Swagger what he really wants (the truth about his grandfather, which they discovered during their investigation). They even state that they were planning to give Swagger that information anyway (anonymously) if they managed to beat him.
  • Targeted The man known only as Delta is a black ops soldier turned mercenary and security guard for cartel transports. He has never lost one before the novel, and when he does in the opening chapter, he survives the ambush due to being Crazy-Prepared enough to wear a bullet-proof hat. When his ambushers are arrested, Delta is hired to kill them in prison to prevent a Mob War. Aided by a bomb maker named Niner, he makes the DEA aware of how important the prisoners are and plans to kill them in transit. When his canny targets escape in route to the ambush sight and take a nearby congressional hearing hostage, Delta adapts his plan immediately, choosing a plan that will let him infiltrate the hostage situation while Impersonating an Officer and kill his targets rather than trigger a bloodbath that will kill everyone present and make him and his boss public enemies. His plan succeeds flawlessly, with Delta fighting alongside of an oblivious Swagger to take out two of the hostage-takers. Delta is stopped by a By-the-Book Cop as he leaves but avoids being exposed due to keeping his cool and a distraction provided by Niner.
  • Pale Horse Coming: Davis Bonverite is the illegitimate half-brother of Cleon Bonverite, who abused Davis for having an African-American mother. Cleon killed Davis's mother, Davis burning their father alive in his bed thinking that he was the culprit. Decades later, a wealthy Davis seeks to get revenge on Cleon and free the oppressed African-American townspeople and convicts being exploited, tortured, and experimented on. Davis tricks the determined, well-connected Earl Swagger and his friend Sam Vincent into visiting the Bonverties' hometown, Thebes, for another reason and getting targeted, tortured and nearly killed by Cleon's men]. Earl and Sam escape and set out to destroy Cleon's operations in revenge, exactly as Davis intended. Davis sneaks into the town himself, cleverly hidden in a boat of waterproof coffins his shell companies are distributing through the region, which also serve as rafts for the convicts and townspeople to finally escape in. Earl and a group of allies eliminate Cleon's men and Davis kills Cleon. Even after being mortally wounded, Davis takes comfort in the success of his plan and how he leaves behind sons to continue his line.
• Moral Event Horizon:
  • Chronologically, Frenchy Short gets one in Havana when he finally decides to set up his Morality Pet Earl Swagger to be killed after having previously saved his life even after going bad. In terms of order of appearance, he crosses it in his first book, The Second Saladin with the reveal that he sold out his protege to be tortured (quite horrifically) with a blowtorch by the KGB in order to force him to sell out a camp of mujahideen (including women and children) they proceed to bomb who the Soviets already knew the location of thanks to Frenchy just to cover his tracks and make it look like the leak didn’t come from him.
  • In Pale Horse Coming The Doctor becomes a lot harder to see as a Token Good Teammate with the reveal that he gave his pregnant wife syphilis (a bad enough case to kill the baby and leave her infertile) due to an extramarital affair and rather than confess the truth, hired several men to rape her so that she’d think that she got syphilis from the rapists. The fact that his initial attempts to find a cure for the disease as atonement instead cause him to start developing it into a weapon don't help.
  • Hollis Etheridge and his father Harry in “Black Light” with the reveal that Not only did Hollis rape and murder a little girl, but they specifically made sure to frame a black person for it.
  • In The Day Before Midnight despite his plans to cause WWIII and kill millions, Pashin is still a bit of a Well-Intentioned Extremist who feels that war is inevitable and that it makes sense to launch it in terms which will reduce the number of people who die (at least on his side). Then it turns out that he drugged and raped the wife of the scientist who designed the missile silo (and the man who will be trying to keep him out) just to feel like he’d gotten inside the man’s head. The fact that he’s casually prepared for his own nephew to be collateral damage of the plot (due to being in the blast radius of a second nuclear bomb he’s planted) just emphasizes how rotten the guy is.
  • Hugh Meachum remains a Well-Intentioned Extremist and Tragic Villain throughout Point of Impact and The Third Bullet right until the reveal that he deliberately set up his accomplices (one of whom was his own cousin) to be killed in order to keep them from ever talking. Plus he’s become a drug-running mob boss since faking his death
  • In Havana Frankie is a bit of a Laughably Evil Butt-Monkey until he oversees the killing of the Hooker with a Heart of Gold helping Earl, which involves a lot of Eye Scream.
  • In Sniper’s Honor Groedl gets this, combined with some Bait the Dog at the end of his first chapter when he prioritizes train space to taking Jews to concentration camps over evacuating wounded German soldiers.

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