10:45am Thursday 25th February 2010
It is November 1942, and the outcome of World War Two hangs in the balance. One man holds the knowledge that could bring ultimate victory.
So begins Racing to Armageddon, the debut novel from East Finchley author Jeff Robson, a thriller that goes back to the origins of the nuclear age.
Dr Dimitri Vlasenin, hero of the Soviet Union and Nobel Prize-winning nuclear physicist, is disillusioned by the horrors of Stalinism and attempts to escape to the West. However, Stalin’s secret police capture and torture him to reveal the whereabouts of a his most recent findings.
There begins a race between Britain, the Nazis and Italy to find Vlasenin and his vital information. The British rescue mission led by Major Alexander Rawlings, becomes an epic journey, leading from the Kremlin corridors of power to the streets of Istanbul and the mountains of occupied Greece. Loyalties and ideals face the ultimate test, and his deadliest enemies may be within his own team.
Jeff, who grew up watching classic war movies and reading authors such as Jack Higgins, Alistair MacLean and Frederick Forsyth, says he felt there was a gap in the market for an old-fashioned war story.
“The idea germinated over many years – a scientist who personified the creation of atomic weaponry, hunted by all sides,” he says.
Jeff, who works in journalism, carried out research, visiting Greece, Turkey and Bulgaria, and interviewing experts on the history of the period and former British servicemen who remembered the Greek resistance campaign.
“It’s a key element of the book,” he says. “There was a Soviet-influenced guerrilla group and a British-backed one, fighting each other as well as the Germans. It was the only country where British troops ended up killing – and being killed by – resistance fighters. I felt it was the ideal backdrop for a thriller where loyalties are conflicted and some of the characters feel a greater allegiance to a cause that transcends national boundaries.
“I was also fascinated by the idea that scientific advances were taking place that would change the nature of warfare, and the world, for ever. The idea of having a character at the heart of that, but who had become so disillusioned with his country that he was ready to betray it, seemed to me a very potent one.”
Racing to Armageddon, by JV Robson, is published by Authorhouse (www.authorhouse.co.uk). The website www.racingtoarmageddon.co.uk has more about the author and the inspiration behind the book, as well as extracts.
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