Three Hours in Paris, with its timetable structure and its hunt for a covert operative, recalls such comparable works as Frederick Forsyth’s The Day of the Jackal and Ken Follett’s Eye of the Needle.” Black (also the author of a long-running series of detective novels featuring Parisian investigator Aimée Leduc) excels at setting vivid scenes, creating lively characters and maintaining pulse-elevating suspense. “Beyond Black’s encyclopedic knowledge of Paris, her deft interweaving of WWII history and spycraft with a relatable female protagonist puts Three Hours in Paris on par with other top thrillers about botched missions followed by harrowing escapes-such masterworks as Frederick Forsyth’s The Day of the Jackal, Jack Higgins’ The Eagle Has Landed and Tom Clancy’s Patriot Games.” Chances that you’ll be able to put Black’s thriller down once you’ve picked it up? Also slim to none.” Using wits alone, she must evade the Gestapo and make it back across the English Channel. The premise is that an American female sharpshooter is parachuted into France to assassinate Adolf Hitler. It’s mystery master Cara Black’s first standalone novel, a spy story set during World War II in Occupied Paris. Three Hours in Paris isn’t just any old formulaic 'Get out!' tale. *Features an illustrated map of 1940s Paris as full color endpapers.Ī Wall Street Journal Best Mystery of 2020Ī Washington Post Best Thriller and Mystery Book of 2020įinalist for the 2020 Dashiell Hammett Prize for Literary ExcellenceĪn Amazon Best of the Month Pick for April 2020Ī Barnes and Noble Monthly Pick for April 2021

New York Times bestselling author Cara Black is at her best as she brings Occupation-era France to vivid life in this masterful, pulse-pounding story about one young woman with the temerity-and drive-to take on Hitler himself. When Kate misses her mark and the plan unravels, Kate is on the run for her life-all the time wrestling with the suspicion that the whole operation was a set-up.

Thrust into the red-hot center of the war, a country girl from rural Oregon finds herself holding the fate of the world in her hands.

But other than rushed and rudimentary instruction, she has no formal spy training. Wrecked by grief after a Luftwaffe bombing killed her husband and infant daughter, she is armed with a rifle, a vendetta, and a fierce resolve. Kate Rees, a young American markswoman, has been recruited by British intelligence to drop into Paris with a dangerous assignment: assassinate the Führer. In June of 1940, when Paris fell to the Nazis, Hitler spent a total of three hours in the City of Light-abruptly leaving, never to return.

Three hours in paris by cara black