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Enigma

3.77 of 5 stars 3.77 · rating details · 4,095 ratings · 201 reviews

"LITERATE AND SAVVY . . . BRIMS WITH WARTIME INTRIGUE."
--The Washington Post Book World
England 1943. Much of the infamous Nazi Enigma code has been cracked. But Shark, the impenetrable operational cipher used by Nazi U-boats, has masked the Germans' movements, allowing them to destroy a record number of Allied vessels. Feeling that the blood of Allied sailors is on their h...more

Paperback, 390 pages

Published May 2nd 1996 by Arrow (first published 1995)

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Sep 27, 2007 lindsay rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I'm a sucker for anything that involves solving puzzles, so I was pretty sure I was going to like this book when I picked it up. It's a reasonably fast-paced novel that revolves around codebreaking at Bletchley Park during WWII.

The main character, Tom Jericho, is a cryptanalyst who has had a nervous breakdown due to the strain of codebreaking and the end of his relationship with a woman, Claire, who also works at Bletchley Park. However, Jericho is suddenly called back to work when the Germans c...more

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May 09, 2012 Lynley rated it 1 of 5 stars

This isn't the sort of book I'd normally pick for myself, which is why I joined a book club, I suppose.

This was the first spy book I've read, and possibly the last for a good while. My one star review is a reflection of the fact I don't find espionage the slightest bit interesting, nor have I ever understood what people see in cryptic crosswords and sudoku. Each to their own.

All that aside, I was prepared to like a book about wartime spies, except even as a non-specialist of the genre, I could...more This isn't the sort of book I'd normally pick for myself, which is why I joined a book club, I suppose.

This was the first spy book I've read, and possibly the last for a good while. My one star review is a reflection of the fact I don't find espionage the slightest bit interesting, nor have I ever understood what people see in cryptic crosswords and sudoku. Each to their own.

All that aside, I was prepared to like a book about wartime spies, except even as a non-specialist of the genre, I could see from reading other crime fiction and watching popular TV series that this writer, like so many others, has relied too much on stock characters. Robert Harris has said that he purposefully prioritises fast-paced plot over characterisation, and in this he succeeded. I didn't get to know Claire well enough before she disappeared, and was therefore not invested in finding out why she'd buggered off.

I am most fed up with plots which rely on beautiful (blond) women who use their sexuality to manipulate men in power ('Claire'), contrasted with plain, feminist, hard-working lesbian types who always seem to get screwed over (Hester Wallace).

Several things irritated me about the writing style. The character called Logie seemed to say 'old love' after every single thing -- a tic as annoying on the page as it would be in real life.

I got utterly sick of the constant snide jabs at Hester's clothing and appearance, in case the reader hadn't picked up from the initial thumbnail sketch exactly what sort of trope she is. Yet Hester was my favourite character. She saw right through the patriarchal bullshit of wartime: 'Everything interesting is done by men. Women do the rest', yet Jericho's main criticism is that she isn't pretty but could be: 'She could be pretty, he thought, if she put her mind to it.'

Pathetic characterisation aside, I thought the setting was painted adroitly and I almost felt for myself the cold of the night seep into my bones as I read.

Most disappointingly, I didn't identify with Jericho and therefore couldn't care about him either. I actively disliked him, actually, and I think it was from that moment he harassed Hester on her bicycle, refusing to let her go off into the night. Some men who accost women at night, even with good intent, don't seem to realise how terrifying it is for a woman.

I can't comment too much on the plot, except that it failed to hold my attention, but it wasn't lost on me that, once again, we have a story held together by the possibility that a sexually alluring woman has been strangled to death, her blood stained underwear found by the water.

That's what makes an interesting plot, is it? I'm getting mighty sick of that.(less)

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Jun 03, 2011 Kay Rollison rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

For many people, Ian Fleming summed up spy stories when he described his own James Bond books as being ‘bang, bang, bang, kiss, kiss, that sort of stuff’. But as with other genres, there is the crude and the subtle, with the best as good as many conventional novels.

On of the good ones is Enigma, by Robert Harris. Harris is an English writer, who, though not aspiring to write the sort of novel that will win a Booker prize is nevertheless an excellent craftsman who tells a clever and convincing...more For many people, Ian Fleming summed up spy stories when he described his own James Bond books as being ‘bang, bang, bang, kiss, kiss, that sort of stuff’. But as with other genres, there is the crude and the subtle, with the best as good as many conventional novels.

On of the good ones is Enigma, by Robert Harris. Harris is an English writer, who, though not aspiring to write the sort of novel that will win a Booker prize is nevertheless an excellent craftsman who tells a clever and convincing story. He often writes history with a twist – like what if the Nazis had won the war. Most of his heroes are ordinary people caught up in extraordinary events. Most of his stories involve intrigue and cover up, but this is the only real spy story he has written.

In Enigma, Harris has interwoven fact and fiction. It is a story about the code breakers who worked at the secret Bletchley Park establishment to break the German Enigma code during World War II. Harris first thought of writing about code breaking while watching a documentary on the brilliant mathematician Alan Turing who worked at Bletchley Park. ‘I thought what a great character a code breaker would make’, he says.

It took Harris three years to write the book, as little had ever been made public about Bletchley Park and he had to track down former code breakers and personnel who were able to tell him about life there and how the code breakers had actually worked. The naval battle which plays an important part in the story is also real. Harris says he ‘tried to pick the single most dramatic short period I could find in Bletchley’s history’ and chose a week in March 1943 where, briefly, the British were blacked out in reading the Shark Enigma – which was the Enigma key for the German U-boats – just as the biggest two convoys of the war left New York. ‘I took the frantic battle to get back into reading the code as the backdrop for the book’ he says. The fictional story is about one of the code breakers, Tom Jericho, whose girlfriend – or rather the girl who had a brief affair with him – has disappeared, and in looking for her, he finds another mystery which points to a traitor within. Thus the story falls within the classic boundaries of the spy story genre, with Jericho, the professional intelligence collector, also acting as an amateur spy.

It is also interesting to note the link between events in the book and the recent death of the Polish President Lech Kaczynski in a plane crash when visiting Katyn, the site of a massacre of 20,000 Polish officers by the Russians during World War II, at the time blamed by the Allies on the Germans.

Harris is certainly aware of the need for a good plot. ‘My basic advice when writing’ he says, ‘is to get three things happening every two pages. Keep things moving. Think about the book from beginning to end and see the key moments’. One result, he says is that ‘you don’t really hang about and develop characters too much. You don’t stop for long lyrical passages’. But he goes on ‘Having said that, there is no reason why a story shouldn’t carry a lot more freight with it. You can get at a truth as a novelist in a way that you can’t as an historian. I think you can bring things alive, the sense of fear, prickly fear, the sweat, the smell of the place and so on’. The sense of reality comes from a subtle perception of how and why things might ‘really’ have happened.

There are elements of both ‘bang bang bang’ and ‘kiss kiss’ in Enigma. But they satisfy a different need from the sensationalism of the Bond stories. Harris relies on creating a sense of realism in which ordinary people do the best they can against real dangers, rather than relying on gadgetry and unlikely heroics against an equally unlikely fiendish enemy. It’s a different kind of spy story.

Enigma is one of those rare cases where the film (2001) is as good as the book. It was directed by Michael Apted, and stars Dougray Scott and Kate Winslet.

In his novel, Ghost, which came out in 2007, Harris turned to much more recent history. The main character is a ghost writer who is called in at short notice to tidy up the memoirs of a recently retired British Prime Minister after the ex PM’s original ghost writer is found drowned. The Prime Minister in question, named Adam Lang, is easily recognizable – Harris said he half expected a writ against him when to book was published. And of course, all is not as it seems. The book has been turned into a film by Roman Polanski under the title The Ghost Writer, starring Ewan McGregor. It premiered early in 2010.

Following Ghost, Harris has returned to the Rome of the first century BC for the second of a trilogy about Cicero. Lustrum was published in 2009. Why is ancient Rome of interest to us today? Well you never know; its decline and fall may just have some lessons for us.

View this review at www.whatbooktoread.com (less)

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Jan 29, 2010 Will Byrnes rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: mystery-and-spy-fiction

This is a fictionalized view of the British WW II code-breaking enterprise that cracked the German code scheme named Enigma. Set in the out-of-the-way English town of Bletchley. Tom Jericho is a whiz code breaker who was a crucial player in breaking the original Enigma code. But the effort cost him. Just recovering from a breakdown and a broken heart, he is brought back into the code-breaking effort. The Germans are making it tough on the Brits, changing aspects of their coding process to keep o...more

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May 16, 2013 Alex Pawinski rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Enigma represents all that is exceptional in the world of reading. Robert Harris quite brilliantly encapsulates the adventure, emotion, historical detail and heart felt suspense that defines his very style. Enigma explores one of the most decisive moments in World History that of the U-Boat peril in which threatens to knock Britain out of the war and in which led to Winston Churchill describing it as the only thing he truly feared. The world of intrigue regarding the mysterious code breakers at...more

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Jul 24, 2010 Avel rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

This is an engrossing novel about an amazing wartime secret -- the decipherment at Bletchley Park of the German military, air force, and naval codes by a gang of eccentric cryptanalysts laboring under depressing, exhausting conditions for months on end. Tom Jericho is a Cambridge mathematician with an extraordinary talent for problem-solving, who loses his heart to Claire Romilly, a clerk-typist in another section of the project. Then Claire goes missing, as do a handful of transcribed ciphered...more

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Jun 15, 2012 Kim rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: mt-tbr-challenge

It’s my fault and not Robert Harris’ that I haven’t been able to rate this novel more highly. I bought it a few years ago, on sale at the local bookstore, fresh from having read and enjoyed Imperium. From memory, having seen the movie adaptation a few years previously also influenced my purchase.

The premise is a good one: it’s an espionage story set in Bletchley Park in Buckinghamshire, which during World War II was the site of the UK’s main decryption establishment. This is where ciphers gener...more

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Mar 17, 2011 Bonnie rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Till almost the end I thought I'd be giving this book fewer stars, but the ending tied everything together and left me feeling glad I'd read it. Considering the subject, the breaking of the German Enigma codes at Bletchley Park during WWII, confusion was not inappropriate and that is what I felt. There was a lot going on through the book that I did not remotely understand. I thought that maybe I wasn't reading with enough concentration, but I think that my feelings of confusion were probably wha...more

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Feb 04, 2011 Basicallyrun rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: turing-related

This book makes me happy. Yeah, OK, significant lack of Alan Turing, but to be fair, that's historically accurate. Plus there was the adorable scene where Jericho asks Turing to be his supervisor and is basically 'I want to do this topic because you're studying it too, and you're so smart and all. *puppy-dog eyes*' And how cool is Hester? Perhaps the name bestows innate qualities of awesomeness. I like her being a bitter feminist, because let's be honest here, she's got a damn good point - she's...more

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Aug 17, 2010 Sarah rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: ausgeliehen, read-in-2010

Nachdem ich von "Pompeji", "Vaterland" und auch "Der Ghost" so begeistert war, wollte ich auch mal die älteren Thriller von Robert Harris lesen. Anfangs war ich noch etwas skeptisch, weil ich mit Funken und Funksprüchen eigentlich nichts am Hut habe und mich das auch nicht so wirklich interessiert, aber bald war das Buch so spannend, dass ich es wirklich nicht mehr weglegen konnte.

Es geht um den englischen Mathematiker Tom Jericho, der schon einmal den Code der "Enigma-Maschinen" der Nazis gekna...more

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Apr 13, 2011 Mariah rated it 3 of 5 stars

I found Enigma a compelling page turner. I was able to spend large chunks of time reading which is a plus. Harris weaves a very intriguing mystery into the greater struggle of breaking the Enigma machine. Like Jericho and Hester I really want to know what happened to Claire - even if I don't like her much. I'll never understand the appeal and loyalty these bitchy, self-centered characters demand, but that's another story. I really did want to know not only where she disappeared, but why and beca...more

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Jul 11, 2012 Veeral rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: world-war-fiction, spy-fiction, thriller

Well, as a world war enthusiast among other things, I have read a lot about Enigma and its working. It is safe to say that had it not been for Enigma, Germans would have lost the war a great deal earlier and ironically it was due to Enigma that they lost the war, as they thought that its codes were unbreakable.

Robert Harris has definitely done his research well in the fields regarding Enigma and code breaking done at Bletchley Park during World War II, but I had a feeling that it just served as...more

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Aug 30, 2010 Greg Pettit rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: fiction

Due to the other Robert Harris books I've read, I expected to like this one as well. Unfortunately, it just didn't work for me.

It's a spy-thriller/mystery set during World War II at the English think-tank that decoded the German Enigma cipher machine. The characters and the mystery were not very compelling to me, and I was disappointed that there wasn't more technical history regarding the Enigma machine itself.

Certainly, there are some passage that explain how it worked and how ingeniously it...more

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Dec 07, 2012 Jayseth Guberman rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Of the three books by Harris which I have read, Fatherland and Archangel seem to fall flat by the time one gets to the end. Not Enigma. Enigma is everything the other two aren't. Both Fatherland and Archangel work on fictional premises based upon the asking of an historical "what if?" While interesting stories in themselves they lose their believability factor by the time one reaches the end of the books...which is disappointing for premises which start out with such great promise. Enigma on the...more

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Feb 10, 2013 Graham rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: 2013-reading-challenge

boffins, especially those in mathematics, are caricatured as soul-less, emotionally inept and socially incompetent. this book tells the story of how two boffins form an unlikely friendship to find out why a mutual acquaintance has disappeared, and why she was hiding coded radio transcripts from an obscure Eastern front signals outpost under the floor boards. set in the period of ww2, at a time when shipping was under the threat of uboats, and placed in the context of the famous
bletchley park, th...more

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Jan 04, 2011 Sean Randall rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

"You can at least say this for the blackout, he thought, it has given us back the stars."

For my first read of 2011 this went down very well. I was only 8 years old when this book came out and despite an attempt to try and read it a few years thereafter, never got into it. Now that I'm older, there was no doubt in my mind as to just how thrilling a story it was.

"They've got ten U-boats on their backs and you want them to tell you the weather?" "Yes, please. Fast as they can."

My best scene was, I...more

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Nov 29, 2011 Nuno Vargas rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: my-library-physical

This was a parting gift from friends and I'm really glad to have received it :)

The story is very interesting, particularly for those who are curious about WW2 and the developments in computation made during that time. The technical aspects of the Enigma machines are described in detail but I went looking for visual information online, it makes it so much easier to understand.

What I especially enjoyed was how much the reader is immersed in what life was like during those years. You feel the humil...more

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Apr 22, 2013 Stein rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: novels-thriller

The seven sections of the book are introduced by one definition from "A Lexicon of Cryptography". These should have been in the front of the book rather than dispersed since most of the terms are already introduced in the first section without explanation. Consequently the flow of the narrative can be hampered by readers' ignorance of technology. Does this spoil the suspense? It did for me. The plot itself is obscure and leaves unanswered questions for the reader after the conclusion. The first...more

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Mar 18, 2013 Abhinav rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: the-cj-library, 2013-reading-saga, thriller, semi-favorites, historical-fiction, espionage, i-own-a-copy

Ah, the satisfaction one gets after reading a good, intelligent espionage thriller. And especially if it's after a reasonable period of time.

British author Robert Harris has long been regarded as one of the exponents of the literary thriller genre, and he succeeds in making an impression upon me through 'Enigma', his second novel.

Tom Jericho is a brilliant mathematician & works as a cryptanalyst at Bletchley Park, the institution that houses codebreakers to counter Nazi Germany's coding mach...more

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Jul 05, 2011 Stamatios rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Absolutely engrossing. A fascinating detective story that takes place during the peak of the second world war in 1943. The plot may be fiction, but all the historical events, places and names are true, giving the book a gritty realism. The background is the allies' amazing feat to break the infamous German Enigma code, but you don't need to be a mathematician to appreciate the book. The miserable routine of everyday life at Bletchley Park, the suffering of the people who worked there and the ove...more

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Aug 26, 2009 Adam Sprague rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

When I began this book and after the first chapters I thought for sure I was reading a smaller version of Neal Stephenson's Cryptonomicon. That sure did change in a hurry.

One of the things I enjoyed the most was the layering of storylines. One part is the coverage of WWII crypto and the other the disappearing of Claire. Unfortunatley (at least for me) the book was about 80% about the missing girl. The longer the book went on the less and less the book became about crpyto and the more it became a...more

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May 07, 2012 Sarah rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: historical-fiction

During WWII, the Nazis relied on the fiendishly complex Enigma engine to encode their communications, which the Allies worked feverishly to crack with prototypical computers, endless drudgery, and a handful of mathematical geniuses toiling in utmost secrecy at Bletchley Park. The stresses already broke Thomas Jericho once, but a new threat means he must be recalled to that claustrophobic madhouse. Further complicating his life is the disappearance of his former girlfriend, whose odd behavior hin...more

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Jan 12, 2012 Kelly rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I tried to get Fatherland out of the library but this was all they had - and then I read it in a day. I'm more satisfied with this novel in retrospect than I was while I was reading it; I kept wanting more from it than a simple "I knew what the right thing to do was but instead I helped my girlfriend out" plot and yet the twists were enough to keep me reading. But then: I did manage to read it in one day, so I wasn't completely without love for it. But just for future reference, can someone find...more

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Jan 24, 2012 Maura rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: historical-fiction, mystery

I was worried when i first started in on this. I had been psyched to read a WII/cryptography book and found a whole big love affair taking center stage. luckily i stuck with it -- about halfway through it turns into a mystery novel, where the love affair is just necessary background. for someone who doesn't know much about Bletchley Park and how the British worked on cracking the German code (generated by the Enigma machines), it gives a lot of good details on that. For someone (like me) who alr...more

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Aug 19, 2012 Dawn rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Great story based on fact at Bletchley Park covert Cypher coding center a large country house in middle of the English countryside, utilized during WW2. Secret administrative work for the War Effort. 1975 was when it eventually became known and was "Britain's Best kept Secret".. The first Computer's and code machines..I have been to the place worth a visit archived material.
Personal Storyline about Alan Turin the Codebreaker from Cambridge who helped Britain crack the code, along with his friend...more

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Jan 02, 2013 David rated it 1 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Not interested in the war itself, but would of appreciated a book which was simply more easy to read to get me interested in the subject. There was very little to like about any of the characters, with really not many emotions given out by the main character Jericho which made him likeable or interesting whatsoever. Despite the fact he was meant to be super intelligent. As for all the code breaking, this was pretty dull to read and impossible to understand unless you're some sort of expert. I do...more

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Aug 03, 2011 Moray Barclay rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

As with his other work Robert Harris does not just write a great story, he brings history to life. The backdrop is the English winter of 1942 / 43. The severe weather is exacerbated by useless heaters and made more depressing by severe rationing and awful food. Even the coats are grey. The bleakness is vivid.

I had doubts that the author could create a thriller plot around the code-breaking activities at Bletchley Park without reinventing history, but remarkably he does achieve this, and without...more

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Apr 24, 2011 Genia Lukin rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: mystery-and-detective, historical

The basic idea of this story, like so many of others Harris wrote, is; 'take an interesting historical period, throw in some Noir, mix, add fascinating and beautiful femme fatales to flavour'.

It's a recipe that usually works, but, just like your basic meat-and-potatoes, it's not something you'd serve for a gourmet meal unless you're a really genuinely good chef. Harris is rather more my mother throwing together a nice but not terribly inspiring dinner than the three-star restaurant serving a ste...more The basic idea of this story, like so many of others Harris wrote, is; 'take an interesting historical period, throw in some Noir, mix, add fascinating and beautiful femme fatales to flavour'.

It's a recipe that usually works, but, just like your basic meat-and-potatoes, it's not something you'd serve for a gourmet meal unless you're a really genuinely good chef. Harris is rather more my mother throwing together a nice but not terribly inspiring dinner than the three-star restaurant serving a steak, but, hey, I don't go out to restaurants every day of my life, and my literary cuisine can use an occasional homemade plain meal.

The basic story focuses on the WWII decryption of the Germans' Enigma code; a feat which both helped win the war - perhaps singlehandedly won it - and was the root of yours truly's review sitting out here today, and you being profoundly bored by it. The time and place where electronic computing first came into being, though Harris doesn't put much emphasis on that. The protagonist is Tom Jericho, a brilliant mathematician and cryptanalyst with large amounts of hormones. He falls in love with a seemingly vapid, but admittedly gorgeous, blonde named Claire, has a nervous breakdown, breaks the Germans' code, goes away, comes back, and gets into trouble. All in about four chapters. Then things get really tangled.

Part of my problem with this book was that I'd just recently read through Collins's Woman in White, and reading Enigma rather reminded me of that mystery classic. There you had Laudanum, here you have Germans and U-Boats. Much of the rest of the plot seems like a reflection of that other book, told more succinctly, and with less appeal to diaries.

So my problems with The Woman in White, which I actually found an excellent book by and large, were neatly reflected here, as well. Of course, whereas the former was written by a well-known Victorian misogynist, Mr. Harris has no such excuse. I hope he realizes just how tired the average female reader grows of reading about the intelligent but plain woman who busily aids in the investigation being shuffled off as a potential love interest for the sake of the beautiful and feminine damsel in distress. Honestly, I get quite bored. One would think a mathematician, a person to whom his profession is everything, would be inclined to seek out a mate he could actually talk to, rather than one simply to look at. I mean, if he really needs perfect beauty to admire, he could buy a painting, right?

But no, we must follow up with the cliche. After all, if we put too much pepper in the potatoes, some bland and banal palate might not appreciate it.

And no adding any sort of odd sauce to the dish, either. The bleak, noir world of Bletchley Park - which happened to be criticized by people who were there - is the perfect grim and grimy setting for a crime; the character is a sort of traumatized and disillusioned noir detective, maths style, dismissed and later re-evoked for his brilliance. There's a scene of him losing his badge (for the Nth+1 time). The foolish supervisor is there, the obstructing bureaucrat is there, the loyal but uninspiring coworkers are there...

Mind you, the book as a concoction is not at all bad, like my mother's cooking isn't - at least, it's wonderful cooking anywhere within hearing of my mother - and it has its merits. For one, the math and cryptoanalysis is well-researched and explained. The fellow is no Stephenson, I suppose, but so far as I could tell, being a mathematician only by marital proxy rather than by inclination, he wasn't Dan Browning the whole affair.

Also, the book, although it drags at times, is eminently edible - I mean, readable - and digestible by pretty much anyone. I can't really point to a person or demographics and say 'no, don't read this'. It may not enthrall or impress you, but, really, there's very little chance that you'll throw it into the garbage bin after taking a single bite.(less)

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Jan 21, 2012 Heikki rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

A review of "Enigma" by Robert Harris

Enigma is one of the icons of World War II. It is told countless times in as many connections how the British cracked the seemingly uncrackable German cipher machine, and utilized the decrypts in all secrecy to win the war.

Of course, such a situation provides ample opportunities for suspense writers. I've read about ten books on the Enigma, its precursors, and successors, but I have to say Harris delivers such a wonderful novel on the singular starting point,...more A review of "Enigma" by Robert Harris

Enigma is one of the icons of World War II. It is told countless times in as many connections how the British cracked the seemingly uncrackable German cipher machine, and utilized the decrypts in all secrecy to win the war.

Of course, such a situation provides ample opportunities for suspense writers. I've read about ten books on the Enigma, its precursors, and successors, but I have to say Harris delivers such a wonderful novel on the singular starting point, which is the near-invincibility of Enigma. The one flaw in Enigma was that even if it yielded astronomical permutations for its ciphertext, a letter would never get encoded in itself. With this wedge into the cipher, Bletchley Park turned the war around.

Enter Tom Jericho, a brilliant mathematician straight out of Cambridge's mathematical Tripos exams. He delivers crucial input for the cracking of the coded messages, falls in love with one of the girls in the Huts where the hard work is done, and suffers a mental breakdown. His medical leave is cut short when the officers who run Bletchley Park need his services again, but Claire, his love, has disappeared.

After WWII, especially now that we live in an age of information and computers, it is easy to forget what a Herculean task it was to crack Enigma, and that the basis for all British success was lain by Polish mathematicians who reconstructed Enigma from the messages, without having access to a live one. The diverse set of people, from Classical scholars to crossword and chess champs, all the way to musicians and mathematicians, performed an amazing task of intellect and we owe something to them today. Just remember Alan Turing.

Harris spins a tight web on intrigue and narrow escapes and this is a pageturner if there ever was one. Having read extensively on Bletchley Park before reading this book, I am full of admiration for his skills in taking real events and people, and embedding his fictional ones in the mesh so that there's no telling who is for real and who is not.

That question pesters Jericho all through the book too. He trusts few people, mostly himself, and is proven right in doing so. The culprit in the book remains hidden into the end, but at that point, when all is revealed, the reader marvels at the author's skill of making all facts available so that they come together so well.

The final outcome of the book is as surprising as it is convincing and believable. I can recommend Harris' Fatherland, Pompeii, and with some reservation, Ghost, but for sheer brilliance in concept and execution, Enigma remains in my mind the best of his books.(less)

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Oct 05, 2009 Alice rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: historical-fiction, crime-mystery, also-a-movie

I adored the setting and characters - I am a sucker for anything historical and cryptanalytical, so Bletchley Park is pretty much the perfect setting for a book, in my opinion. The story was a little weaker - it veered off towards the end into Dick Francis / Dan Brown territory, where the main (male, ordinary, and inexplicably attractive to the drop-dead gorgeous heroine) character somehow manages to escape from the middle of the plot with nothing more than a slap on the wrist and a full confess...more

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About Robert Harris

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Robert Dennis Harris (born 7 March 1957 in Nottingham) is a best-selling English novelist. He is a former journalist and BBC TV reporter. He specialises in historical thrillers noted for their literary accomplishment. His books have been translated into some thirty languages...more

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“By dawn he had surrendered, gratefully, to the old inertia, the product of always seeing both sides of every question.” — 6 people liked it

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Enigma

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