Shooters

Even after Trautmann’s excellent introduction, which provides the context for Shooters, a reader whose interests generally lie outside of stories about contemporary warfare might quickly flip through it and decide to give it a pass; that would be a mistake. The story that Shooters tells—about a chief warrant officer named Terry Glass who faces both tragedy in the fields of Iraq and disaster on the home front—could have so easily fallen into cliché or been something that smacked of the inauthentic. But the power of Shooters is that it so deftly and expertly avoids anything that could undermine it. The book looks at the rise of private mercenary outfits in the wars of the Middle East without ever falling victim to a myopic view. The novel can sometimes feel text heavy, but it never drifts into extraneous philosophizing. Lieber’s illustrations help give us a window not only into the faces of war but what is happening behind these faces. Combined with the narrative, they make for a convincing and compelling portrait of war and its consequences. Indeed, Shooters should be read not simply by fans of the genre but by anyone who really wants to think about the themes it raises. (Apr.)