The night a V-1 rocket destroyed our neighbor’s house in 1944, I learned two truths that would later define An Eye for an Eye: Injustice is random, and retribution is human. That bomb missed us by 50 yards for no reason at all, and I watched grown men cheer when Allied planes bombed Berlin.
At six years old, being shipped to Mrs. Winterbottom’s farm taught me how crisis reveals core selves. The kind land girls who shared their rations? They’re the DNA of Nurse June in my novel. The black-marketeer who hoarded sugar? He became the blueprint for corrupt builder Lewin.
Returning to London in 1945, I witnessed both communal solidarity and shocking vindictiveness – like when collaborators had their heads shaved. This duality lives in my protagonists, who deliver brutal justice while showing tenderness to dying hospital mates. Today’s readers think our current justice system is uniquely broken. But the 1946 lynchings of suspected Nazi sympathizers prove how thin civilization’s veneer runs. My book transposes these eternal tensions to modern London, where CCTV can’t stop vigilantes any better than bobbies could stop mobs in ’46.
