Snare of the Hunter

A young woman escapes from Czechoslovakia and the clutches of her ruthless ex-husband, an officer in the secret police. Soon she realises that she has been allowed to defect, in the hope that she will lead the Communists to her father, a writer in hiding in the west.

Irina Kusak’s recently divorced husband, Jiri Hrádek, is a high-ranking official in the Czechoslovakian secret police: cruel, ambitious, utterly ruthless. So when he turns a blind eye to her defection to the west, she is uneasy. Aided in her escape by a group of friends, including David Mennery, an American with whom she once had a passionate affair, Irina begins to feel herself truly free. But soon their journey becomes a nightmare. It becomes clear that Hrádek only allowed Irina to defect in order to bait a trap for her father, a world-famous author living in secrecy in the west, but when she refuses to lead Hrádek to his quarry, Irina herself becomes his prime target.

As Hrádek closes in and Irina’s life hangs in the balance, David Mennery is drawn into a desperate fight to protect her and finds himself once more falling deeply in love…