The Huntress

February 1, 2019

Losing her mom in 1936 was tough, but Jordan McBride and her dad kept it together. Now 17 and dreaming of a photography career in postwar Boston, she finally gets to meet the woman who caught her dad's attention. Meanwhile, in Europe, British former war correspondent Ian and American ex-GI Tony team up with Russian fighter pilot Nina Markova to hunt down war criminals. At the top of their list is the Huntress, known for lulling her victims into a sense of safety before brutally killing them. Nina is the only witness to escape the Huntress. When the trail leads to Boston and the McBrides, will they find a murderer or a dead end? Readers should expect to give up weekend plans once they start this novel. Using fictional characters in a story based on real-life efforts to find Nazi fugitives provides a new historical viewpoint. Quinn (The Alice Network) builds her characters through small details, allowing readers to develop opinions on who's being honest and what their next action might be. The weaving of separate threads into a cohesive, satisfying end is subtle and skillful. VERDICT A great choice for historical fiction fans, particularly of World War IIset novels, mystery readers, or anyone seeking well-crafted stories in which good triumphs over evil. [See Prepub Alert, 8/20/18.]--Stacey Hayman, Rocky River P.L., OH

Copyright 2019 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

December 15, 2018
Nazi hunters team up with a former bomber pilot to bring a killer known as the Huntress to justice.In postwar Europe, Ian, a British war correspondent with a vendetta, and his American sidekick, Tony, have set up a shoestring operation to catch the war criminals who seem to be not just slipping, but swarming through the cracks. The same set of circumstances that led Ian to enter a marriage of convenience with Nina, a Siberian former bomber pilot, has also given both common cause: to chase down Lorelei Vogt, a Nazi known as the Huntress, who, by her lakeside lair in Poland, trapped and killed refugees, many of them children. Lorelei's mother, blandished by Tony, reveals that her daughter immigrated to Boston. Meanwhile, Jordan, an aspiring photographer living in Boston with her widowed antiques-dealer father, Dan, welcomes a new stepmother, Austrian refugee Anneliese, and her 4-year-old daughter, Ruth. Jordan soon grows suspicious of Dan's new bride: A candid shot captures Anneliese's furtive "cruel" glance--and there's that swastika charm hidden in her wedding bouquet. However, Anneliese manages to quell Jordan's suspicions by confessing part of the truth: that Ruth is not really her daughter but a war orphan. That Jordan's suspicions are so easily allayed strains credulity, especially since the reader is almost immediately aware that Anneliese is the Huntress in disguise. The suspense lies in how long it's going to take Ian and company to track her down and what the impact will be on Jordan and Ruth when they do. Well-researched and vivid segments are interspersed detailing Nina's backstory as one of Russia's sizable force of female combat pilots (dubbed The Night Witches by the Germans), establishing her as a fierce yet vulnerable antecedent to Lisbeth Salander. Quinn's language is evocative of the period, and her characters are good literary company.With any luck, the Nazi hunting will go on for a sequel or two.

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Saskia Maarleveld's beautiful voice is an impeccable instrument for this finely wrought historical novel. She can indicate a change of speaker with the subtlest shift of timbre, and often seamlessly alternates, say, the voices of an Englishman, a Siberian girl, and a Brooklyn-born man, with yet a different tone for the narrator, all in one paragraph. In the next paragraph it's a working-class Bostonian, a chilly Austrian with barely a trace of accent, and a wonderful warmhearted American girl. If only Maarleveld wouldn't swallow syllables. Sigh. The huntress of the title is a vicious Nazi murderess being sought on two continents by an ill-assorted, underfunded tiny team of avengers. Maarleveld's Nina, the violent, fierce and unexpectedly touching Russian, is particularly fine, among many great pleasures here. B.G. � AudioFile 2019, Portland, Maine

Starred review from November 15, 2018
Quinn follows up her breakout book, The Alice Network (2017), with an impressive historical novel sure to harness WWII-fiction fans' attention. Each subplot in its triple-stranded structure thrums with tension that intensifies as they braid together. By 1950, the public's appetite for tracking war criminals has diminished, but British former war correspondent Ian Graham and his American partner still pursue this painstaking and honorable work. Their ultimate target is die J�gerin (the Huntress), an elusive Nazi murderess, and, for Ian, the mission is personal. As they follow her trail, along with Nina Markova, the sole person to escape her clutches, Nina's life story unfolds with tangible realism. A distinctly memorable, prickly, razor-wielding heroine, Nina flees remote Siberia in 1937 and trains as a pilot, eventually joining the sisterhood of female bombers known as the Night Witches. Lastly, in 1946 Boston, 17-year-old aspiring photographer Jordan McBride grows suspicious of her father's elegant new Austrian wife. The secondary characters, from Nina's anti-Stalinist father to Jordan's pilot boyfriend, feel three-dimensional, and the coldhearted Huntress is a complex villain. Laced with Russian folklore allusions and deliciously witty banter, Quinn's tale refreshingly avoids contrived situations while portraying three touching, unpredictable love stories; the suspenseful quest for justice; and the courage involved in confronting one's greatest fears. HIGH-DEMAND BACK STORY: Prepub excitement is running high with a substantial first print run and major, multiplatform publicity campaigns.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2018, American Library Association.)