The bear becomes almost a totem, and shows up in different ways through the very end of the novel. He reluctantly shoves the Steiff bear he’s bought for his daughter’s birthday back into his bag and begins his hunt. This unhappy task falls to Gunter Hoffman, who is given 36 hours to find the shooter. As it’s 1940 it’s not a spoiler to say Kate misses her target, though she does hit another one, and the Fuhrer wants the shooter found and dispatched. Black then turns her sights to her real objective: telling an hour by hour story of the hunted and the hunter. This look at Kate’s backstory is both narratively efficient and extremely effective as it causes the reader to care about Kate and be completely invested in her. She’d been living in Scotland with her Welsh husband and their baby daughter when she loses them both to a German bomb, making her determined to fight the Germans with every bit of herself. The set up introduces Kate as she’s waiting with her sniper rifle for Hitler’s appearance then it goes back in time, very briefly, to establish Kate as a person. The propulsive narrative follows Kate Rees, a young American sent to assassinate Hitler when he visits Paris for three hours in 1940. This ticking clock thriller feels like the book Cara Black has long wanted to write, it’s so explosive, so taut, and so impossible to stop reading. This book will be available on April 7, 2020.
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