TRIAL AND TRIBULATION

A military strategist helps shape a plan that results in her estranged pilot husband flying a perilous mission in Rhodes’ World War II novel.

This fourth book in the Breaking Point series continues the story of Eleanor Shaux, who works in Great Britain’s Allied planning and intelligence services, and her Royal Air Force wing commander spouse, Johnnie. The novel opens in 1942 with Johnnie in Australia, touring aircraft factories; people there hold him in awe, as he fought in the famed Battle of Britain. Eleanor, meanwhile, is a confidante of U.K. Prime Minister Winston Churchill. In a push to roll back Axis forces in Europe, strategist Eleanor is charged with devising a way to fatally weaken the German economy, and this involves the development of a strategic bombing campaign. Johnnie returns to England to test new weapons, but his perception of the war is changing; he’s come to see it as “organized killing on a grand scale.” Soon, he’s tasked with a risky flight that his wife approved, and she worries if her spouse, with whom she has a fraught relationship, will make it home alive. Military aircraft buffs will delight in the detail that Rhodes supplies regarding technical specifications: “Mosquitos had four cannons and four machineguns in the nose, all packed tightly together and firing straight forward along their axis….” The author is equally capable of eloquently communicating the emotional difficulties in Eleanor and Johnnie’s marriage: “Instead of all the other things that married couples do, they just went to bed to escape from the rest of the world.” Some descriptive passages prove a bit heavy-handed: “Someone dropped a pencil, and it sounded like a boulder.” Still, the intricate storyline and Rhodes’ enviable knowledge of military history successfully keep the narrative moving. A section in which the author clarifies which events actually occurred allows readers to easily distinguish fact from fiction. Overall, this is a clever novel that ably moves between the politics of Whitehall and the white-knuckle ride of aerial combat while also offering an unconventional love story.

A smart and gripping portrait of the many facets of conflict.