Who can you trust? War always has two sides.
Kay Caton-Walsh has survived a V2 attack and is now a WAAF. She is working in Belguim locating launch sites.
Rudi Graf worked on the building of the V2 and is now launching these leathal weapns at London.
Both of them are working towards the end of the war but who will win?

Rudi Graf wanted to send rockets to the moon, but instead is drafted into creating the V2 rocket. Hitler creates a rocket programme of 10,000 missiles in the winter of 1944, hoping to win the war through bombing major cities in the UK and liberated territories. Graf leads the programme, but becomes increasingly disillusioned with it.

On the other side of the missile is Kay Caton-Walsh, survivor of a rocket attach, who becomes part of a unit of the Women's Auxiliary Air Force to be sent to Belgium to track the rocket trajectory and destroy the launch sites. 

Robert Harris tracks back and forth between Graf and Caton-Walsh, and tells a morally ambivalent tale, of how the Allied Forces used the V2 programme after the war for their own ends - as well as the scientists who built it. At the same time, he tells the story of the ordinary citizens, whether in London or Belgium, trying to live in extraordinary times - and how some got caught up in situations where their moral compass was deeply compromised. 

It's a thrilling race to the end, but it's more than that. Harris, like John le Carré, questions the assumptions of thrillers set in war-time (including the Cold War), and swerves nationalism to tell a more textured and nuanced tale of murky moral compromise on both sides. Lastly, the details sing in the novel, as do the settings in the UK, Germany and Belgium. They just feel right. A superlative piece of work. 

With thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for an advance copy.

Another super fact based story from this master  novelist based on the story of the V2 rocket with details of its launch and the results of its landing on London. On the English side we have a young WAAF and her tale of landing in Belgium to assist in tracking the rocket. On the German side the tale of one of the scientists who helped his friend Von Braun design the weapon and their subsequent move after the war to America and the space race.The mundane details of life give a wonderful sense of time and the pace never flags up to the main characters meeting at the end and the unanswered question of was it a short meeting or something else. Superb!

Nobody writes thrillers set during WW2 better than Robert Harris. V2 is even better than Enigma. Much better.
The young German scientists working at Peenemunde had dreams of building rockets to fly to the moon. Hitler had them using their skills to send rockets to destroy London.
Cleverly combining fact and fiction Robert Harris has written a thriller that gives his characters on both sides the empathy needed to make this book work.
V2 has all the tension and suspense of The Riddle of the Sands. No doubt, like that classic this thriller will also still be being read in over an hundred years time.
Superb.

V2 is a wonderful novel.  Completely fantastic.  Harris’s style is effortless and intimate, leading the reader not just to the site of the action but into it through the delight of the characters bringing the story to life.  Set in November 1944, Europe was in its sixth year of the Second World War.  In the summer that year, Allied forces had broken out of the Normandy Beachheads and began pushing East through Europe.  Events were beginning to turn irrevocably in favour of the Allies and Hitler would commit suicide in five months’ time.  German morale was low and they needed success from their wonder weapon, the V2 rocket.  Firing these from the Dutch forests rained vengeance on London. 

Robert Harris is a master at bringing history to life with vivid description and most importantly, through such rich and endearing characters taking the reader right to the heart of the action.  The humanity in the story leaves us rooting for characters in both the British and German sides, with the plucky British heroine, Section Officer A. V. Kay Caton-Walsh – “Kay” – stoically determined to play her part in the war and locate the launch site of the V2 rockets in the Dutch forests, countered by the idealist Dr Rudi Graf who dreamed of developing of rocket travel to the moon, but is struggling with the destructive output from the V2 programme and the gruelling intensity of the launches.

The description of a V2 rocket strike, hitting Chancery Lane in London, seemed particularly vivid for me as I’ve worked in an office in that lovely part of London.  It felt voyeuristic reading the chilling five minutes of flight after launch, travelling at nearly three times the speed of sound, Harris has the reader doing the literary equivalent of hiding behind the sofa – the scene shifting from rocket launch, switching to an ordinary day in London life, back to rocket in flight, with the inevitability of the strike hitting the characters being watched.  The vulnerability and bravery of Londoners who had survived the Blitz becomes clear as they have to face a new fear of the V2 rocket - terrifyingly real and chilling.

Harris paints additional colour into the story with a wide cast of supporting characters, such as the creepy womanising Wing Commander Leslie Starr – whose hands earn him the nick-name “wandering Starr” who is happily countered by the brilliantly intimidating matriarchal Flight Officer Sitwell with whom most people and their attitudes do not in fact… sit well.  On the German side, Sturmscharführer Biwack from the National Socialist Leadership Office joins the V2 launch team in order to “boost their morale” and gives such a sense of immediate threat and fear with his Gestapo SS position that many times throughout the book, I stopped to draw breath, realising that the freedoms we enjoy today, take for granted today, were won by many brave men and women, on both sides of the war, fighting for these beliefs and values.  

This is a powerful story, told expertly through a rich platoon of characters and draws compassion for both sides.  V2 is a wonderful tale of Victory and Vengeance.  I highly recommend it.  

(Guest reviewer - my husband!)

What can I say, apart from this is such a great read!!

The story is told from two differing points of view, on the British side you have Kay Caton-Walsh, as WAAF officer who has a top secret job and also knows the effects of the V2, and on the German side you have Graf an engineer, who with his friend helps to develop the science behind the V2, although he eventually becomes discouraged by the German war machine.

There is a lot of technical talk, maths etc, but please do not let this put you off the story, everything does get clearer. 

The book has been thoroughly and comprehensively researched and some elements of the story are just heart breaking, the description of the enslaved labour for example. Also learnt something, never knew the pre runner for space travel was the V2! 

Highly recommended

This is Robert Harris at his best. Hitler is desperate and is persuaded towards the end of the war to authorise the building of V2 rockets to be fired from Belgium to London. The story starts with one successfully finding its target in London, affecting the life off a young female officer destined to become involved in the attempt to track down the source of the V2 missions. The detail of the building and use of the weapons by the 
Germans is superbly well researched. Dr Rudi Graf is an engineer who hoped to devise moon rockets but finds himself developing the V2s instead. He is a very well drawn character, intrigued by the opportunity to use his professional engineering skills but troubled by the damage he knows his work is creating. The story takes turn about being in the German side then the British. It is excellent reading. Then the two themes come to an ending with a suggestion that an element of love might be possible. This is a fascinating insight into the ambivalent views of some Germans and a rewarding read. I recommend it.

Fantastic book!  I have always enjoyed Mr Harris’s books but this book really stands out as it grabbed me from the first paragraph and held me captive until the last.  The story line was fresh, Mr Harris clearly researched the history very throughly which added many small details that makes the book so interesting.  The  characters are fully developed, for me a real mark of a master author.  The locations are brilliantly drawn for you, the whole of the book is so well crafted that the story stays will you long after you finish the book.  For me this is a very special read giving you an insight to a time of terror.  This is a must read.

A gripping read right from the start.  It was very well paced and I would recommend it. Fans of Robert Harris don’t want to miss this one!

Another great combination of historical fact and fiction by Robert Harris. The story revolves around the V2 bombs fired by the Germans in WWII, with one half of the story based around one of the scientists who developed the bombs and the other half around a WAAF officer who is part of a team trying to locate the launch sites. It rattles along and if you’ve enjoyed other of his works, I think you’d also enjoy this,

Normally I don't like novels where there is so much technology.  However it works very well in this one.  Basically there are 2 parallel stories which flank the development and use of the V2 bomb.  The technicalities about the bomb, slow the pace of the characterisation and background to the plot.  The two characters are well developed and Harris manages the difficult job of making the German scientist who is one of the main characters, fairly sympathetic.  That I didn't really understand the science, didn't take from my enjoyment of the book.

A Fascinating blend of fact and fiction.  Great page turner and insight into the late war effort from both sides.  Would rate 5 star,  gave a great understanding of how technical World  War 2 was.  Thoroughly enjoyable read and would definitely recommend.

This is a highly informative and detailed story of the deadly V2 rockets deployed by the Nazis in the closing stages of the war. It is told from the perspective of Kay, a WAAF officer, who with other women, is flown into Belgium in an effort to trace the launch site of the rockets, using their advanced mathematical skills. The other perspective is from Dr Graf the engineer/ scientist who is a German civilian, but has been co opted by the Nazis onto the development/ launch  team for the V2s, not entirely willingly.
I have to say I found much of Dr Graf’s chapters very technical, and with many Nazi and SS officers of varying ranks and positions, from various sectors of the German war machine, the content was sometimes a challenge to mentally assimilate. 
The opening chapters were utterly chilling, the description of the V2 rocket landing on London, and the resulting carnage was distressing to read, especially as we know that this part is a factual account. 
The race to detect where the launch site might be, so it could be destroyed, is the main thrust of the story from a British point of view. From the German side, it is a huge push, despite the terrible human cost, to deploy as many rockets to land in London in as short a time as possible, before their launch location is discovered. 
Kay’s story is fairly lightweight by comparison to Graf’s,  her character is not explored in any great depth, but it portrays the role of the WAAFs in WW2 and shows how their specific skills were invaluable to the Allies.
I learned so much recent history by reading this book, although it was pretty depressing to contemplate at times. The writing is impeccable, as expected  from this author. A thought provoking book with an unusual theme, I would recommend it.

My thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for my advance copy of this title.

Hi Folks
This was an excellent read.  The story involved the Rocket Scientists responsible for the V2 rockets as well as the WAAF officers that tried to identify the launch sites.  Particularly poignant was the mention of Longbridge Road Barking.  Barking was where I lived in 1945.

This book is so well researched the authenticity shines through. The story is told from both sides of the channel.  For the British, it is Kay Caton-Walsh, a WAAF officer with a top secret job, who has first hand experience of the effects of the V2. For the Germans, Graf, an engineer, who with his friend Von Braun, were in at the beginning of the race to develop the rockets. This is so well written, it sets a great pace, and also makes you think.  The consequences of the rockets development to both sides was immense, particularly the enslaved workforce.  Atmospheric, each thread of the story beautifully woven into an authentic account of a tiny part of WWII that barely registered in any history lesson. Excellent read.

Thanks to netgalley and the publishers for an ARC in return for an honest review.

Excellent fiction again from a terrific author combining both historical incidents and characters into an interesting story that also educates the reader about the reality and horror of war. I did feel the ending was rushed and would happily read more.

Historical fact and fiction blended together in the latest blockbuster by bestselling author Robert Harris. V2 (Hutchinson) tells the story of Hitler’s last desperate attempt to turn the tide of WWII. Hitler so desperate he ordered 10,000 to be built of the most advanced rockets the world had seen. Mostly written during the pandemic lockdown, V2 is an enthralling read. 

The story is set in the winter of 1944 in London, Holland and Belgium, for Rudy Graf who used to look up at the moon and thought about designing a rocket to land a man there, life during this stage of the war took a sinister turn along with his friend Werner von Braun designed the ballistic Vengeance weapons to strike terror and death and destroy London and also Antwerp and win the war. It takes just 5 minutes from launch in Holland to hit London and there are no warnings.

In London intelligence officer with photographic reconnaissance, 24-year-old Kay Caton-Walsh has had a lucky escape when a V2 hits close to where she has been staying with a married senior officer in the RAF, now Kay wants to get more directly involved in the war effort before the war ends. Locating the launch sites for the V2 rockets has been a massive problem and now efforts are being stepped up to find them and Kay together with a team of women and officers are sent to Mechelen in Belgium to work on calculations based of the trajectory of the V2’s when they are launched and then the RAF is scrambled to the target and destroy the launch sites. 
The death toll in the construction of the rockets is huge around 20,000 slave labourers were killed in the production of the V2 weapons. The rockets were never accurate but carried a one-ton warhead that caused death and devastation, the need to seek and destroy the rockets sites was now a priority. 

In Holland Graf was becoming more and more disillusioned, some of the rockets were failing and malfunctioned. But now the SS officers running the sites believe Graf is involved in deliberate sabotage. Tension is running high as the high command insist on more and more rockets are launched. 
Meanwhile in Mechelen it is pencil and paper and calculations that a pin pointing the launch sites. But the correct calculation has to be made in no more than six minutes to prevent another launch. 

V2 by Robert Harris is a gripping and enthralling account of life during the latter stages of WWII and what it takes to try and stop the V2 rockets destroying London. It is also fascinating to read what happened at the end of the war.  

320 Pages.

Robert Harris does not disappoint  - meticulous research, strong characterisation and an enthralling story.

As you read the book you do not realise you are having a history lesson on the development of rockets in pre war Germany through to the destruction of the V2 rockets.

Although technical in parts, V2 is another entertaining read from a master story teller.

V for Vengeance

Robert Harris always choses imaginative and fascinating topics for his novels. Where these work out well in the plots, such as in the Cicero novels, An Officer and a Spy or Fatherland, then the novels are a treat for the reader; when he is less successful (in my opinion), for example in resolutions of Conclave or The Second Midnight, the novels still remain intriguing and thought-provoking.

I worried V2 might fall into the second category when I began to read, but far from it. The story of the deployment of the Germans’ last secret weapon and the attempts by the British to thwart the attacks is told at a breakneck speed over the period of four or five days and nights. The two protagonists, WAAF officer Kay and German engineer Graf only meet in the final pages, but their stories are exhilarating and moving throughout. The roles of women in the British war effort and scientists in the German hold the interest and the twin tales are gripping, even if the resolutions come swiftly. I have sometimes enjoyed a Robert Harris novel but have felt let down by the ending (Conclave is a case in point), but I am so pleased that this one ended exactly as it did. Wholly satisfying.

5 Stars

A truly compelling and fascinating historical novel. The prose is excellent, the pacing relentless, the dialogue fully concise and in service to the action. The plot mainly serves as a superstructure for all the amazing information about the V2, the engineers and military, and the spies and victims of it's short reign during WW-2.

<i> As usual with my reviews, please first read the publisher’s blurb/summary of the book. Thank you.</i> 

Beginning in September 1944, <b>over 3,000 V2s were launched by the German Wehrmacht</b> against Allied targets, first London and later Antwerp and Liège. 

<A href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/V-2_rocket" target="blank">Wikipedia article on V2 Rockets</a>

<img src="https://www.allesoverboekenenschrijvers.nl/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/Robert-Harris-V2-Recensie.jpg">
<a href="https://www.allesoverboekenenschrijvers.nl/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/Robert-Harris-V2-Recensie.jpg" target="blank">Full size image here</a> 

The story immediately explodes into action in the first pages with Kay, the young WAAF (Women's Auxiliary Air Force) in a hotel room with her lover, just as a V2 crashes into a neighbouring building and explodes.

The story of the incredible technology, planning and execution of its launch follows from Kay's curiosity and a desire to do more than endlessly scan aerial photos of the V2 launch areas. Harris' exposition is spare and compelling, and the story provides an excellent vision of the launch areas and nearby cities in Belgium at the end of the war.

We also experience the German side from a scientist-engineer, Graf, through whose eyes and thoughts we see the technological miracle, as well as the evil of Hitler and his minions.

The prose and exposition are quite wonderful, Harris is in top form here. The book certainly did not seem to be 320 pages, and every page was terrific right up to the climax and quite-satisfying, semi-historical resolution.

<b>Note and quotes:</b>

Truly extraordinary technology for the 1940s, a triumph and a curse. A genius, Von Braun, with no impediments to his personal goal of reaching the moon, no matter how many would die to get there.

V2 cutaway
<img src="https://i2.wp.com/spacerockethistory.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/03/v2_cutaway.jpg">
<a href="https://i2.wp.com/spacerockethistory.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/03/v2_cutaway.jpg" target="blank">Full size image here</a>

<i>Like a sprinter poised on her starting block a split second after the pistol was fired, the V2 at first appeared stalled, then abruptly she shot straight upwards, riding a fifteen-metre jet of fire. A thunderous boom rolled from the sky across the wood. Graf craned his neck to follow her, counting in his head, praying she would not explode. One second … two seconds … three seconds … At exactly four seconds into the flight, a time switch was activated in one of the control compartments and the V2, already two thousand metres high, began to tilt towards an angle of forty-seven degrees. He always regretted the necessity for that manoeuvre. In his dreams, she rose vertically towards the stars. He had a last glimpse of her red exhaust before she vanished into the low cloud towards London.</i>

V2 in transport cradle with V2 just launched in background
<img src="http://ww2today.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/V2-launch.jpg">
<a href="http://ww2today.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/V2-launch.jpg" target="blank">Full size image here</a>
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<i>SIXTY-FIVE SECONDS AFTER TAKE-OFF, AT an altitude of twenty-three miles and a velocity of 2,500 miles per hour, an on-board accelerometer simultaneously cut off the fuel supply to the V2’s engine and activated a switch that armed the warhead fuse. The unpowered rocket was now ballistic, following the same parabolic curve as a stone flung from a catapult. Its speed was still increasing. Its course was set on a compass bearing of 260 degrees west-south-west. Its aiming point was Charing Cross station, the notional dead centre of London; hitting anything within a five-mile radius of that would be considered on target.</i>
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<i>A hundred miles to the east [of London], the V2 had reached its maximum altitude of fifty-eight miles–the edge of the earth’s atmosphere–and was hurtling at a velocity of 3,500 miles per hour beneath a hemisphere of stars when gravity at last began to reclaim it. Its nose slowly tilted and it started to fall towards the North Sea. Despite the buffeting of cross-winds and air turbulence during re-entry, a pair of gyroscopes mounted on a platform immediately below the warhead detected any deviations in its course or trajectory and corrected them by sending electrical messages to the four rudders in its tail fins. Just as Kay was fastening the second of her stockings, it crossed the English coast three miles north of Southend-on-Sea, and as she pulled her dress over her head, it flashed above Basildon and Dagenham. At 11.12 a.m., four minutes and fifty-one seconds after launching, travelling at nearly three times the speed of sound, too fast to be seen by anyone on the ground, the rocket plunged onto Warwick Court.</i>
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<i>An object moving at supersonic speed compresses the atmosphere. In the infinitesimal fraction of a second before the tip of the nose cone touched the roof of the Victorian mansion block, and before the four-ton projectile crashed through all five floors, Kay registered–beyond thought, and far beyond any capacity to articulate it–some change in the air pressure, some presentiment of threat. Then the two metal contacts of the missile’s fuse, protected by a silica cap, were smashed together by the force of the impact, completing an electrical circuit that detonated a ton of amatol high explosive.</i>

The devastation of a single V2 explosion
<img src="https://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2014/09/10/1410356401929_wps_3_WW_II_Gemany_Rocket_Shell.jpg">
<a href="https://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2014/09/10/1410356401929_wps_3_WW_II_Gemany_Rocket_Shell.jpg" target="blank">Full size image here</a>

Early Graf and Von Braun and their club
<i>They raised money for the Society for Space Travel at a stall in the Wertheim department store. (‘Ladies and gentlemen,’ declared von Braun, ‘the man is already alive who will one day walk on the moon!’)</i>
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<i>‘In Germany now there are three choices,’ Kammler told them. ‘You are shot by the SS, you are imprisoned by the SS, or you work for the SS.’</i>
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<b>Incredible. The Germans killed 4x as many of their own people during construction and launch of the 3,000 V2s as eventually died from being actual targets.</b>

<i>Twenty thousand people had died at Nordhausen making the V2, four times as many as had been killed by it.</i>


<b>Interesting Acknowledgements and Historical notes from Robert Harris</b>

THE BULK OF THIS NOVEL was written during the 2020 lockdown imposed by the COVID-19 pandemic. For four hours every morning, seven days a week, for fourteen weeks, I retreated to my study and closed the door–a lockdown within a lockdown–and I would like to express my love and gratitude to my wife, Gill Hornby, and our two youngest children and fellow isolators, Matilda and Sam, for their good company and cheerful forbearance during this surreal interlude.

The genesis of this novel was an obituary in The Times on 5 September 2016 of ninety-five-year-old Eileen Younghusband, which described her work as a WAAF officer in Mechelen. I subsequently read her two volumes of memoirs, Not an Ordinary Life (2009) and One Woman’s War (2011). My fictional WAAF officer bears no resemblance to Mrs Younghusband,

Precisely what went on in Mechelen in the winter of 1944–5 is hard to establish, and I have had to rely on guesswork and some artistic licence.

Nevertheless, I would never have written V2 were it not for her disclosure of the existence of the Mechelen operation. I will always be grateful for her inspiration.

Robert Harris
<img src="https://www.irishtimes.com/polopoly_fs/1.4000083.1567002376!/image/image.jpg_gen/derivatives/box_620_330/image.jpg">
<a href="https://www.irishtimes.com/polopoly_fs/1.4000083.1567002376!/image/image.jpg_gen/derivatives/box_620_330/image.jpg" target="blank">Full size image here</a>


(( I will post on Amazon UK and Amazon USA at publication date ))
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