In the aftermath of the Nuremberg trials, most people want to move on from World War II stories. But British journalist Ian Graham, who lost his brother, Sebastian, in the war, has given up writing to spend his life hunting down Nazi criminals. Ian and his business partner, Tony, join forces with Ian's estranged Russian wife, Nina Markova, in a quest to track down Seb's murderer, a woman known as die Jägerin: the Huntress. Kate Quinn's gripping novel follows the trio as their story intersects with that of Jordan McBride, a young aspiring photographer in Boston, and her stepmother, Anneliese, whom Jordan suspects isn't telling the whole truth about her past.
Building on her success with The Alice Network, Quinn constructs three intertwining narratives: Ian's no-nonsense investigative work (which keeps getting inconveniently hijacked by his emotions); Jordan's hunger to follow her passion for photography and to figure out what Anneliese is hiding; and Nina's journey from her half-feral childhood on the banks of an isolated lake in Siberia to her career as a decorated Soviet pilot. Nina's story, based on the real-life flying exploits of female aviators during the war, is by far the most dramatic. Fiercely independent, mistrustful of others and completely in love with her plane, Rusalka, Nina becomes an opponent worthy of the titular huntress.
While readers may guess the huntress's identity long before Ian and his team can prove it, Quinn's narrative is full of suspense. Expertly plotted, with questions of justice at its center, The Huntress is a dark, riveting account of war, revenge and deep human compassion in the face of both. --Katie Noah Gibson, blogger at Cakes, Tea and Dreams