"V2" by Robert Harris

 Dr Graf is a senior member of the team launching V2 rockets to bomb London in World War Two, but he doesn't believe in the Nazi attempts to win the war. Kay Caton-Walsh is one of the number-crunchers who are trying to pinpoint the rocket launch site so that the RAF can bomb and destroy them. This is a thriller immersed in its history, with plenty of statistics for those who like watching Top Gear and reading Jane's Encyclopaedias.

Selected quotes:

• "I have spent the last ten years of my life by the side of the sea, he thought, always with the smell of pine in my nostrils and the taste of salt in my mouth, listening to the seagulls and straining my eyes at a wide sky." (Ch 7)
• "In Germany now there are three choices ... You are shot by the SS, you are imprisoned by the SS, or you work for the SS." (Ch 17)

September 2022; 307 pages

Robert Harris is the author of many many books, some of them reviewed in this blog:

• The Second Sleep
• Conclave
• The Ghost

This review was written by the author of Motherdarling  and The Kids of God