Sniper's Honor by Stephen Hunter

Consider this a two-fer from a power rotation author.

Story 1: It’s summer, 1944. The Russians are pushing the Nazis back and both sides know Germany’s days in Russia are numbered. Mili Petrova is one of Russia’s most accomplished snipers and is given a special assignment. She is to travel to Ukraine, join up with partisan forces who will get her close to the German Obergruppenfuher of the region by the name of Groedl, a former economics professor who overseas the extermination of Jews in Poland and Ukraine.  She has an assignment and nothing will stop her from her duty.

As she joins the partisans, they come under attack by an elite Nazi mountain division. The only way they could’ve been ambushed is if the Nazis had inside information and that could only have come from the Russians. Makes no sense that the Reds would try to kill one of their most decorated heros.

That also means Groedl knows she’s coming for him and he devises an elaborate plan to make himself visible while also tightening a noose around her. All this going on right when Russia is organizing a major offensive to push the Nazis out once and for all.

Story 2: Bob Lee Swagger is 68, sitting on his Idaho porch; bored but happy with life. He’s seen more combat than most soldiers and is content with how life is winding down. But he is bored. An old friend, Kathy Reilly, a Moscow correspondent for The Washington Post emails him with a question about an obscure WWII rifle . . . a sniper’s weapon. She’s working on a feature piece about a part of the war most Americans have little understanding including some Nazi-Russian battles that were on a scale that was degrees larger the Normandy and unfathomable armored battles that make Kasserine Pass look like a day in a sandbox (Hunter's description of an armored battle that took place in an obscure area called Kursk, and Petrova's role, is riveting). Reilly's research uncovers some clues to a mission to assassinate a German regional head. Problem is that while the mission is ordered, she can find no mention of the outcome. 

Swagger also needs a mission and offers to come to Russia to help her figure the outcome. To do so, he needs to see the land to see what her options were and how she might’ve plotted out her strategy.  But someone has latched on to their inquiries and wants to convince them to abandon their quest. And they are none to subtle about their persuasions.

Make that 3 stories: Hunter also takes us into Israeli intelligence where a bulldog of a researcher notices unusual purchases of platinum by a shadowy company based in southern Russia. Of course, it’s related to Petrova and Swagger and Hunter skillfully, and slowly, brings us to just how.

Swagger is about my favorite continuing character who, unfortunately, will likely age out and give way to a new Hunter character, but Bob Lee will be hard to top. These two parallel stories, while quite different, will eventually merge as Swagger sort of gets into Petrova’s mind and comes to develop a healthy respect for Petrova whose only goal is her mission. Finding out what happened to her is his way of honoring what, on the surface, looks like a just hiccup in the war on the Eastern Front, but really should be a fascinating story for Americans about a decorated Russian sniper who for a week or two, was the most hunter person by both the Russians and the Germans.

If the format (Swagger in the current day investigating an historical event) sounds familiar to Hunter’s previous effort, The Third Bullet, it is. But while I thought The Third Bullet wasn’t one of Hunter’s best Swagger novels (hey, they can’t all be winners . . . but that doesn’t change his place in my power rotation), Sniper’s Honor is far superior to The Third Bullet. Swagger fans will not be disappointed.