A good read…

A very good read, indeed…my buddy Marty loaned the latest Stephen Hunter novel, Sniper’s Honor, to me a few days ago, and I couldn’t put it down.   Read the entire thing in about a day and a half.  It was that good.

You’ve seen the posts on Mosin-Nagant rifles I’ve written here on the blog, and this novel is square in the middle of that.  The Russian snipers used Mosin-Nagants to great effect during the Siege of Stalingrad and elsewhere.   Sniper’s Honor is the fictionalized account of a female sniper during World War II.  It’s a novel, but the premise is not…Russia relied heavily on snipers (including female snipers) to help defeat the Nazis during World War II, and they used the 91/30 Mosin-Nagant rifle.

The significance of that 91/30 nomenclature is that these rifles were originally adopted by the Imperial Russian Army in 1891, updated slightly in 1930, and then used continuously thereafter.   They are inexpensive, they are accurate, and they are an affordable bit of shootable history.

Knowing a bit about the Mosin-Nagant rifle made Sniper’s Honor even more interesting.   Hunter did his homework…the descriptions were technically accurate and the idea of a knockout, drop-dead gorgeous Russian female sniper is not far from the truth.   If you think I’m making this up, I’m not…take a look at this beauty, Roza Shanina, who actually was a Soviet sniper back in the day…

As I read Sniper’s Honor, ol’ Roza was the woman I visualized as the female sniper.   I had to wonder if Hunter somehow saw that photo above and it planted the seed in his mind for this great read.   I’m sure he did…the female protagonist in the Hunter novel had 59 confirmed kills, the same as the real world Roza Shanina!

So, if you want a good read, a real cliff-hanging thriller that is technically accurate, Sniper’s Honor is one you might want to pick up.   The novel switches back and forth from 1944 to the present, and the real hero is a guy named Bob Lee Swagger (located in the present) who is 68 years old.   Great story, great rifles, a beautiful woman, and the protagonist is a fellow geezer.   It just doesn’t get much better than that!