Harris, Robert – V2

V2 by Robert Harris

"V2" by Robert Harris is a novel set in November 1944. During this period, the war is underway and is being faced on several fronts: Germany is bombarding London with the new V2, the latest generation missiles, still unstable on some fronts but extremely useful on the other, given the fact that the one-ton warhead that characterizes them is capable of traveling at three times the speed. of sound, on the other hand Great Britain is studying an offensive to stop the Germanic enemy. To have studied them and to help get them started is Rudi Graf, an engineer, who oversees the works and developments in a gloomy Dutch town occupied by the Nazis. All he can do is obey, the bombings are more numerous every day, the enemy must be shot down.
Meanwhile, Kay Caton-Walsh, an auxiliary officer in the British Air Force and having an affair with a married man her colleague, escapes a V2 attack just as she is with Mike. His position is now compromised: the sentimental bond has come to an end, that refusal to follow him to the hospital is as raw and hard as the need for her to leave London. That is why his talent for mathematics will be rediscovered to be very useful; the German missiles must be stopped and what better way than to intercept the launch bases. How? By identifying the starting trajectory with a series of logarithmic calculations and a ruler, exploiting that one plausible weak point ...
Two parallel fronts are those of Rudi and Kay in which nothing is as it appears and in which the true and the false, as well as the possibility of trusting the right people and information, are concepts as fleeting as they are fragile. Two parallel roads that will come to meet with the bitterest of truths.
With this story, the author brings to light a historical fact rooted in our past and creates a perfect synthesis between reality and fiction. If on the one hand we are involved in what is the story that is carried out by the narrating voices, on the other we are fascinated and intrigued by what these missiles represented and by the historical period examined.