The Diamond Eye

June 1941. Lyudmila Pavlichenko – Mila to her family and friends – is a historian working on her university dissertation when Hitler invades Russia. Despite having a young son by her estranged husband, Mila enlists in the army at the age of 24 and joins the Red Army’s 25th Rifle Division. Her skill with a rifle soon becomes apparent and she goes on to become the world’s most successful female sniper, with 309 confirmed kills credited to her. Some dispute this claim, others assert her true tally is even higher.

Kate Quinn takes these basic facts and weaves a gripping story of one woman’s war, interspersed with a doomed love story and the tale of an extraordinary publicity tour to the United States in which Mila Pavlichenko was paraded before journalists and the American public and used to drum up support in the US for the much needed second front to distract Hitler from his onslaught against Russia.

This is not an easy book to read against the backdrop of another horrific war, now with Russia as the aggressor against Ukraine. Mila Pavlichenko was Ukrainian by birth and the university where she studied was in Kiev – now Kyiv – a city currently under bombardment by the Russians. The timing of the release of The Diamond Eye is unfortunate, to say the least, with Putin’s invasion showing no sign of abating. This will almost certainly overshadow this excellent historical thriller, which deserves to be taken on its own merits.

Mila Pavlichenko’s story is told with a hefty dose of military black humour and an even heftier dose of humanity, despite Mila’s clinical approach to death. Her Mosin-Nagant bolt-action rifle is her closest friend. She knows that if she looks after her weapon, it will look after her. Her next most important relationship on the front line is with her partner, the man who quite literally always watches her back, closer to her than her own shadow, and knowing her like no one else does. In the book, her sniper partner is given the name of Konstantin – Kostia – Shevelyov. Mila has a sadly short-lived but intense front-line relationship with a young officer, Alexei Kitsenko, nicknamed Lyonya, and also has to contend with the unwanted attention of her estranged husband, who manages to join the US publicity tour, during which Mila forms an unlikely friendship with the formidable First Lady, Eleanor Roosevelt.

The detail of life and death in the besieged city of Odessa is brutal and heart-rending. Mila is injured frequently and loses men in her platoon at a frightening rate, from raw recruits to more seasoned fighters, but every time she’s hospitalised, she’s determined to re-join her comrades as quickly as she can. Her skills as a sniper are revealed in numerous, at times almost inconsequential, details, all of which provide a telling insight into how she earned her reputation and the nickname of ‘Lady Death’. Each chapter is introduced by an extract from Mila’s diary, accompanied by wry, often cynical comments contrasting her ‘authorised’ history with the grim reality that needs a novelist to bring to life, and in that respect, Quinn succeeds admirably. An equally interesting author’s note provides some historical perspective and explains where liberties have been taken with Mila’s story and why.

This is a thoroughly absorbing story of war, love, and politics. But the real tragedy  never far from my mind is that the country of Mila Pavlichenko’s birth is once again besieged by a ruthless enemy, intent on conquest at all costs.

View this book through the prism of history, if you can. Mila Pavlichenko’s story is one that deserves to be told.