Author: Kate Quinn
Performed by Saskia Maarleveld
Published by HarperCollins, released on Audible September 2019
Category: Historical Fiction Based on Fact
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
On the icy edge of Soviet Russia, bold and reckless Nina Markova joins the infamous Night Witches – an all-female bomber regiment – wreaking havoc on Hitler’s Eastern Front. But when she is downed behind enemy lines and thrown across the path of a lethal Nazi murderess known as the Huntress, Nina must use all her wits to survive.
British war correspondent Ian Graham has witnessed the horrors of war from Omaha Beach to the Nuremburg Trials. He abandons journalism after the war to become a Nazi hunter, yet one target eludes him: the Huntress. Fierce, disciplined Ian must join forces with reckless, cocksure Nina, the only witness to escape the Huntress alive.
In post-war Boston, 17-year-old Jordan McBride is delighted when her long-widowed father brings home a fiancée. But Jordan grows increasingly disquieted by the soft-spoken German widow who seems to be hiding something. Delving into her new stepmother’s past, Jordan slowly realizes that a Nazi killer may be hiding in plain sight.
Journalist and war correspondent Ian Graham and Tony Rodomovsky, formerly a sergeant in the US Army, have joined forces to hunt down Nazi war criminals. They’ve been successful in several cases, but the one Ian really wants, for personal reasons as well as the fact she is a cold blooded killer who doesn’t balk at killing children, is Die Jägerin, also known as the Huntress, but so far she has eluded them.
She was not used to being hunted.
The lake stretched slate blue, glittering. The woman gazed over it, hands lying loose in her lap. A folded newspaper sat beside her on the bench. The headlines all trumpeted arrests, deaths, forthcoming trials. The trials would be held in Nuremberg, it seemed. She had never been to Nuremberg, but she knew the men who would be tried there. Some she knew by name only, others had touched champagne flutes to hers in friendship. They were all doomed. Crimes against peace. Crimes against humanity. War crimes.
There had been a couple of hopeful leads that led nowhere when Ian met a refugee who had known and been kind to his brother Sebastian. She had also crossed paths with the Huntress. Sebastian had promised to get the refugee to England so Ian made good on his brother’s promise.
She was born of lake water and madness.
Nina Markova had been born and brought up by Lake Baikal in Siberia by a brute of a father. When a plane made a forced landing near the lake she was mesmerised by the sight, sound and look of the plane and at that moment knew exactly what she wanted to do. To fly. Eventually, after leaving everything she knew behind her and long hours, days and weeks of hard training to earn her pilots license, she enrolled for the Night Witches, a Soviet all female night bomber regiment during the war.
In 1950s Boston we meet Jordan McBride, an aspiring photographer who wanted to make photography her profession. She’s encouraged to follow her dreams by her stepmother. But there’s an item, and one particular photograph she snapped on a whim, that unsettled her. The feeling and memory faded with time as she came to love her stepmother, but eventually came back to haunt her.
The Huntress is up there with the other books I’ve listened to by Kate Quinn. Historical fiction set during and after WWII, based on fact with an excellent plot. Told from three perspectives – Jordan, Ian and Tony and Nina – and from past to present. All of them compelling timelines that keep up the pace and suspense, and even though The Huntress’ identity is known fairly early on it doesn’t detract from the story in any way.
Kate Quinn showcases strong, independent and brave women, and those men who made it their mission to bring war criminals to justice. They all made a difference. The Huntress is a multi layered story with well defined and developing characters along with wonderfully atmospheric and descriptive prose, plus a very satisfying ending.
