A Slender Thread (Breaking Point Series)
The Battle of Britain went on for a few short months, but the siege of Malta lasted for two long, hungry years. As told through the eyes of Eleanor, a senior officer and mathematician, and her husband Johnnie, a pilot, we are given a terrifying insight into the odds stacked against this critically strategic island. The issues of keeping the population (whose calorie count is reduced to 1500 a day) fed and the struggle for the convoys to get through the Med are well explored, and the reader is left in awe of the bravery of all concerned. We’re also given an insight into where the attacks on the convoys and the island are coming from—Italy, when it was dominating the area and before the Nazis took charge. Rhodes writes with great empathy for all those trapped in a war over which they had no control.
The third in Rhodes’s WW2 series, A Slender Thread can easily be read as a standalone although the other two books are also fascinating. The main focus in all three is on ‘the few,’ that is, the RAF. Rhodes’s research is a deep dive yet never overwhelming. His characters are well drawn so we’re rooting for them to survive in this most perilous of places and times. All in all, an excellent, absorbing and most enjoyable read.
