Enigma: A Novel

This is a mystery centered around the code breaking at Bletchley Park, England during the Second World War. It is very diverting and often engrossing. While we don't get to meet or interact with most of the important historical characters, the stakes at Bletchley are very high so it is a good setting in which to place a murder. Around all secret projects, there seem to be people who want the secrets and are willing to do anything to get them, even murder. One of the things brought out in the book is that codes broken by Bletchley using a captured German coding machine called Enigma and the rather complex computer developed by Alan Turing to break the codes in any useable timeframe is that once discovered,the information can't really be used to save lives without giving away the fact that the British have broken the codes. So, a question that Harris doesn't really deal with is, "Then what good is it?". I know the answer, but I was disappointed that the book didn't deal with it a bit more.The main character is named Jerico. He has had a nervous breakdown because of a romantic reversal and been recalled anyway because of his outstanding intuition with numbers. He runs into her and wants to find some closure, but she refuses either to see him or the explain why he was rejected. By all accounts she seems to be bed-jumping in order to gain advancement. It is a futile exercise for advancement because in that era and in mathematics in particular, it was a man's game. A woman was not going to jump anywhere merely because of intelligence or talent. Not like in our more enlightened age. Now the girl could be murdering one man after another in order to make room at the top. Unfortunately, none of the lovers are showing up dead. Then she disappears. Since the Soviets are allies during that war, some nasty information discovered through the normal code breaking is quashed to keep the Soviet public face in tact. It was news of the Polish officers massacre once Stalin got the eastern half of Poland with the non-aggression pact with Hitler. There is however a Polish mathematician on the Bletchley crew to whom this information is of primary concern. Who is the Pole? Who is the murderer? Is it him or the girl? Did he kill her to shut her up? Is she really the Spy There are a few more twists after the chase to catch the spy on a departing train. People get shot. Who survives? Is Bletchley's secret still safe? Well, these are things for you to find out. If you are a mystery fan, you'll like this book. History fans may find it a bit underwhelming.

RObert Harris has made a good living crafting thrillers out of significant historical events. Pompeii takes place as the volcano is about to bury the eponymous city in lava. Fatherland poses the question of how a victorious Nazi Germany would supress news of the Holocaust. Enigma uses less obvious but still vitally important event - the codebreakers of Bletchley Park, who kept Britain in WWII by reading submarine dispatches (encoded on the Enigma machine) and diverting Allied convoys around them. Harris sets the book Enigma during the largest convoy battle of the war - the battle of convoys HX-229 and SC-122, attacked by a Wolfpack of over 40 U-Boats - and the codebreakers' attempt to use the signals from the battle to break into the Enigma code. Harris does a very clever thing - using the decoding attempts as an opportunity to explain cryptography, the Enigma machine, the development of the first computers, and even commentary on the collapse of the class system in Britain during the War.But the convoy battle simply serves as the background for the main story. Cryptanalyst Thomas Jericho has been involved with a woman who mysteriously disappears. Jericho and the girl's housemate set out to solve the mystery, which appears to be related to some mysterious unbroken cryptograms from the Ukrainian front. What is the subject of the cryptograms? Is there someone inside Bletchley feeding information to the Nazis? Is the missing girl a traitor or a victim of circumstance?The story is an efficient and taught thriller, seamlessly interweaving historical facts with the fictional mystery story. I'm not sure if someone totally unfamiliar with the Enigma machine and codebreaking would follow the cryptanalytical aspects of the story - certainly those that have seen an Enigma machine (e.g. in the Chicago Museum of Science and Industry) or who understands statistics would be ahead in the game. I suppose it's unlikely those that haven't or don't would pick up this book in the first place.Certainly, this story is vintage Harris, and every bit as enjoyable as Fatherland, Pompeii, etc. The characters are interesting enough, but the real treat is the immersion into the paradoxical life of the intellegence agent - how do you use the information gained without compromising the source?

Robert Harris’ Enigma succeeds on all the counts I had for it – an absorbing, immersive, thriller; one which though a fiction had enough basis in reality for it to appear an authentic possibility; to be educative, informative and clear about the technology without either sending this reader to sleep, refusing to grapple with the nuts and bolts, or employing the implausible devices bad writers use to educate their readers. And, more than this, I wanted the combination of frantic need to turn pages with a wonderfully structured narrative, interesting characters and, above all admirable writing!Harris delivers all – not to mention twists I didn’t see coming but, once they occurred I rather hit my forehead wondering how I could have NOT suspected and predicted them. Those are the very best twists – not ones which are just rather crude writerly devices, but twists which make complete sense AND are missed by the reader – particularly in a book which in the end is about a top secret mission, so every character in the book is rather in the dark on the whole picture, and those that aren’t in the dark are doing their level best to cover their own tracks! Twisty, turny puzzles and a mounting sense of urgency are the background of the real story and setting – Bletchley Park and the cracking of the Enigma code in World War Two – which Harris constructs his wonderful fiction aroundIt is 1943. Alan Turing is not, at this point, in Bletchley Park, but is in America (he assisted in the construction of the famous ‘bombes’ used to crack the codes, for Bell Labs in the States from November 42 to March 43) This ‘absence’ of the known, real figure gives Harris the novelist freedom to keep known and major history in place but have a different cast of characters, without the problems involved in creating untruthful fictions out of real livesHis central character, Tom Jericho, is a young Cambridge mathematician, one of those recruited as one of the Bletchley code-breakers. Jericho is presently back in Cambridge, having suffered some kind of break-down through overwork during an earlier, intense time at Bletchley. He has been sent back to recuperate.Jericho, one of Turing’s students, has been instrumental in a major decoding operation. It’s not only the stress of working against deadlines to crack the codes used by German U Boats as they targeted Allied shipping which caused Jericho’s breakdown, but a love affair gone wrong.Inexplicably to those at Bletchley, the Germans suddenly and dramatically change their known patterns of coding. With America about to send fleets of ships, containing supplies to Britain, and U Boats patrolling the sea lanes, it is essential that the codes are re-broken, and Jericho is summoned back to Bletchley, where he half longs to be and half dreads to be, not least because of the pain of the ending of his love affair.Harris absolutely winds up, tighter and ever tighter, a feverish atmosphere, - working against a dreadfully ticking clock as the likelihood of U Boats finding the American fleet increases, hour by hour. Britain in blackout, edible food increasingly rationed, and dreadful moral calls always lurking – if codes are cracked, how far and how quickly can the Allies save immediate lives in danger, against the fact that such actions will alert Germany to the fact codes have been cracked and lead to radical changes again. And what caused the sudden previous change anyway? Something is not quite right at Bletchley Park…..This is a brilliant thriller, and Harris looks at wider considerations than just the urgency of code-cracking during the war. It also has much to reveal about class politics, gender politics and the sometimes uneasy relationship between Britain and America, linked to Britain’s class-conscious society. Many of the people who came to Bletchley or were recruited into the Secret Services were old-guard, boys-club, those who had come from the ‘best’ public school backgrounds, into the ‘best Universities, and were ‘people like us’ But the war also needed people ‘not like us’ who had the requisite skills in cryptanalysis, the kind of mathematical ability and conceptional thinking which this needed, who might have gone to the ‘best’ Universities on those merits. And there might be others, ‘not like us’ at all in fact, alien to the whole old boy network – women – who might also have the kinds of minds for the work.Bletchley Park recruited many women, and certainly some of them must have been hugely frustrated by being utilised well below their intellectual abilities, confined to less demanding, more lowly (but necessary) clerical tasks, simply due to gender. Some of the women would have had sharper, more astute minds for the work than some of their male section heads. And equally undoubtedly the power differentials between men-in-charge and women in lowlier positions would also have been used and abused.Harris creates two wonderful leading characters, who come into conflict and into a working accord with each other – Tom Jericho himself and the understandably resentful, bitter, highly intelligent Hester Wallace, the house-mate of his lost love, the impeccably upper-class Claire Romilly. It is quite refreshing to see a complex, layered relationship of trust, distrust, dislike, respect and understanding between a male and female, which has nothing to do with a sexual relationship between them, explored.By all accounts the less than satisfying sounding film-of-the-book did an unnecessary sex-up. The film maker, or possibly eyes-on-the-bucksters of raising finances, took the decision to create a love-interest between Jericho and Hester, thus negating the more interesting dynamic which understands that not every male/female relationship needs sex as its glue.A highly recommended, immersive, well-written and intellectually stimulating page-turner. It had me reading far too late into the night, and waking far too early before dawn to pick up again and read further

Great story, well paced and beautifully researched. Makes you want to know so much more about Bletchley Park and all that happened.

Great read

Well researched as ever with this author who tells an exciting and involving story.

This author never disappoints. Found the subject very interesting & something I knew happened but didn't know much about. Got drawn into the story & was with them in the huts working out what the enemy was transmitting. Kept on my toes to the end. Excellent read.