At the same time, he delivers a scorching indictment of von Braun-who was brought to the United States after the war and became the architect of the American space program-as an amoral schemer and careerist who welcomed the SS’s war crimes at Peenemünde (slave labor, summary executions, etc.) when they helped him build his missiles. Harris delivers a tightly-plotted, deeply-researched tale, with enough twists and turns to keep the reader glued to the page. Graf, and his friend, Wernher von Braun, the leader of the V2 program, had been drawn to missile technology by their dream of building spaceships.
Harris’ novel focuses on two characters-Kay Caton-Walsh, a young British intelligence officer who becomes involved in the search-and-destroy efforts against the V2 launch sites in Belgium and Rudi Graf, a V2 engineer, whose doubts about Nazism and his role in the German war machine have grown. While the German missiles caused death and damage in England, they had little, if any, impact on the outcome of the war. The development and use of the V2 reflected Adolf Hitler’s desperate quest for miracle weapons ( Wunderwaffe), an attempt to stave off Germany’s defeat at the hands of the Allies. Novelist Robert Harris ( Fatherland Munich) has returned with a World War II thriller about the British military response to the V2 rockets that the Germans sent raining down on London in 1944, destroying buildings and killing civilians. V2: A novel of World War II by Robert Harris Please note that I’m partial to historical fiction and authors who have a way with words the novels I’ve selected reflect that bias. What are the top spy novels of 2020? Here are my picks (updated as novels are published throughout the year).
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