This character is loosely based upon the real Vietnam War sniper and U.S. Marine Corps legend Carlos Hathcock.

Disenchanted with warfare when invalided out of the U.S. Marine Corps in the 1970s, Bob retreats to a small town in Arkansas, where he lives in a trailer and devotes himself to firearms.

Here he is approached by representatives of RamDyne, a black-bag government organization whose personnel commit off-the-record atrocities as needed.

He detects their untruthfulness and confronts them, at which point they "reveal" to him their true motives: foiling an attempt on the life of the President of the United States at the hand of the same Soviet sniper who ended Bob's military career.

Much later in the novel, Lon makes another appearance as Colonel Shreck tries to set Bob up in Hard Bargain Valley, near the end of the book.

In the 2007 film adaptation DVD special features short titled "Survival of the Fittest: The Making of Shooter", the author states I wanted to write a novel about a sniper.

But there's still - I love that the sniper is a man of grief, with something that I don't think anybody had ever gotten before.A film adaptation of the novel was produced by Paramount Pictures in 2006, titled Shooter, starring Mark Wahlberg as Bob Lee Swagger.

An Indian Telugu language movie called Athadu starring Mahesh Babu directed by Trivikram Srinivas released in the year 2005 is loosely based on this.