Stephen Hunter - Soft Target

10,000 people jam the corridors of America’s largest shopping mall. 9,988 of them have come to shop. The other 12 have come to kill.

Stephen Hunter’s hyperdrive, eighth-gear thriller chronicles the day when the unthinkable happens: terrorists descend upon the heartland, opening fire in a Minneapolis supermall and executing innocent victims one by one.

Those on the upper floors, including retired Marine sniper Ray Cruz, take cover any way they can, but within minutes the gunmen have rounded up more than a thousand hostages. As it so often does, the story comes down to one man with a gun.

Except Ray doesn’t have a gun.

“Stephen Hunter spent years reviewing movies for The Washington Post. That work gave him a keen sense of pacing and timing. The evidence shows up in Soft Target, which unrolls a complicated and grabby plot in just 256 tense pages. And Hunter packs in a surprise with the identity and motive of the individual behind the terrorist attack.”—St. Louis Post-Dispatch

“Hunter’s writing is sharp, detailed and laced with enough offhand wit to keep readers from sinking into the general gore and Islam-bashing. . . . Hunter has produced a fast, gratifying read.”—The Houston Chronicle

“A solid addition to Stephen Hunter’s sniper series, made more engaging by its invocation of current events and political posturing. I join his other fans in hoping he has another one already in the works.”—The Washington Times

“Stephen Hunter didn’t invent the high-action thriller. But, as he once again demonstrates in the lightning-paced Soft Target, he might as well have. . . . Soft Target is Die Hard with a brain and a plan. A lean, action-packed tale that begs to be read in a single sitting.”—The Providence Journal