Hot Springs (ISBN 978-0-671-03545-7) is a fictional work by Stephen Hunter, published in 2000. Hot Springs is a novel telling about gangsters and gambling in U.S. city Hot Springs, Arkansas. It is the first novel in the series featuring Hunter's character Earl Swagger. It is summer 1946 and Earl Swagger, former Marine and recipient of the Medal of Honor, feels he is an angry man with nowhere to go in the post-war peace. But then he joins a new war, the one against organized crime, and in this hellish crucible rediscovers his courageous true self.