I feel distinctly uncomfortable. Shabby and down-at-heel: cold - always marrow-bone cold: under-fed: exhausted. I've been sucked into the world of Bletchley Park, where the code-breakers spent their war years. I was riveted by the picture painted of the privations of the people who served there. The story gripped me at first too, though by the end I felt I wasn't following its twists and turns as I was intended to. As a piece of social history it's a cracking read. As a thriller, a good story, but if I don't rate it more highly than that, It's probably because war thrillers aren't really my thing. ( )

WWII English spy/mystery - fair

Enigma is a historical thriller set against the background of WWII England and the cryptology-deciphering HQ at Bletchley Park. Tom Jericho is a brilliant young mathematican who has been sent back to Cambridge University to recuperate from a nervous breakdown brought on by a combination of stress, exhaustion due to working impossible hours with lack of sleep, and the ending of his brief affair with Claire Romilly, who also works at the site. But he is brought back to Bletchley when the Germans change the U-boat code book and it is no longer possible to read their radio traffic. Jericho is seen as the team's best hope despite his fragile mental state, as he had the insight that led to the breaking of the initial U-boat code. Soon afterwards, the situation becomes critical as two large Allied convoys leave New York bound for Britain, with vital goods, American servicemen and Red Cross personnel aboard, among others, and the whereabouts of the German U-boats remains unknown.

Jericho hopes to speak to Claire and find out why she threw him over, but just as he discovers that she has stolen intelligence from the site - probably a hanging offence - she disappears and he embarks on a mission to find out what happened to her and why she stole the records of those particular German signals. He is assisted by Hester Wallace, a housemate of Claire's who it seems has a lesbian 'crush' on Claire. Jericho learns to his discomfort that Claire was pretty promiscuous with men by the standards of the day. But it becomes increasingly obvious that she was using them, possibly to obtain information, and could in fact be working for the Germans.

The outcome of the story involves several twists and is quite an absorbing read after a slow start. The sheer awfulness of life in Britain in 1943 is evoked well, with an emphasis on the dreadful food that comes across as all too real: people do obsess about food if they are faced with disgusting fare made from potatoes or very odd seafood. The story is set in winter, further adding to the gloom of the characters, and Harris makes the weather another character in its own right. The whole setting of neglect due to a combination of lack of materials or skilled people to maintain property, bombing damage, and the shortages of every kind of material, is well evoked, as is the stress on the naval code breakers who are among the few people to know how dire the situation is becoming with the convoys.

The book features some effective cameos of rather horrible characters such as Hester's boss who uses his position to sexually harrass women with impunity, as the very term sexual harrassment had not been coined at that time and women were expected to put up with such behaviour without complaint. Harris shows how women of ability such as Hester, who won a cryptic crossword competition that was subsequently used to recruit for Bletchley, were automatically posted to clerical duties whereas the men, including those she beat, were equally automatically employed as code breakers. Hester is rightly embittered by this, and Jericho comes over as yet another man who devalues her when he thinks that she would be pretty if she just made an effort. Her calm demenour, ability to think on her feet and her sheer guts make her the most likeable character in the story, certainly far more than Jericho. Without her, he could not have reached the solution to the mystery. It is rather a cliche that Jericho falls hook, line and sinker for the woman with the looks and sexual allure rather than someone with whom he could have an intelligent conversation, although the hints about Hester's feelings for Claire are possibly the author's way of saying any such relationship would be doomed. Anyway, this contrast of the femme fatale with the sensible bookish spinster is a rather shopworn trope by now.

Code breaking does form a limited but important part of the story. As someone not particulary gifted in maths, I found the explanations quite easy to follow though perhaps I had a little familiarity with the subject, having visited the museum at Bletchley some years ago. Anyway, quite an interesting read about a fascinating period of history although the character cliches mean I can only rate it at three stars. ( )

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Harris tells the story of Enigma, the WW II German coding machine, that for a brief time in 1943 stumped the Allied code breakers which in turn led to many Allied vessels being torpedoed in the North Atlantic.
He uses fiction to dramatize the story having the British Intelligence force place a British agent in one of the huts at Bletchley Park to watch for and ferret out any suspicious people who may reveal the Allied knowledge about Enigma to the Germans. The protagonist is brilliant code breaker Thomas Jericho who is recovering from a nervous breakdown as the novel opens and through whose eyes we learn how Enigma works and how the code breakers attempt to break into the messages passing back and forth between U-Boats and German headquarters.

Mainly a fast moving mystery that is a gripping read. ( )