All hail Cara Black who brings us a second book with WWII British sniper Kate Rees. We first met Kate not too long after her husband and baby were killed in a Nazi air raid. She grew up in Northeast Oregon on a ranch, educated well by her father in shooting and in learning how to make one’s way in the wild. Kate was discovered by British intelligence (I forget which agency) and recruited to go to Paris and kill Hitler. We know how that went in the wonderful first book, Three Hours in Paris. And now, we’ve got us a series!
I listened, with pleasure, to the audio edition of Night Flight to Paris. Kate is working as a sniper instructor in Scotland when new orders come in. Her longtime friend Margot, also an agent, needs to be extracted from Paris and a particular German must be taken out, liquified, done in. You know. Sniped. Intelligence he acquired in Egypt could alert Hitler to the Allies’ next move in the war, which would disabuse him of the carefully planted misinformation that they would next move on Poland/Eastern Europe. In fact, the plan is to invade North Africa. (That happened.) Black then takes us on a hair raising series of interactions, changed plans, the need to constantly judge who to trust when one’s mantra is “trust no-one.” The Nazis are entrenched in Paris and there is a reward on Kate’s head. Now, albeit in a Red Cross nurse disguise and equipped with some pretty fancy firearms, Kate has to move all over the city with no clear idea who her contacts are, where the target will be and also, where the heck Margot is.
Black’s writing style is recognizable with Kate’s thoughts shared in clipped partial sentences. I sat outside my house on three separate occasions listening to the end of an engrossing section of the story. There are lots of great characters. The feel of being in Paris in a time of great danger is palpable. And multiple twists make this a unique WWII thriller. I highly recommend Night Flight to Paris. If you like audio books, this was beautifully narrated so go for it.
They Called me Bookworm 