Enigma by Robert Harris
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Book Reviews of Enigma
Book Review: So good it's ruined me for most other thrillers
Summary: 5 Stars
This book is at once a breathless thriller with amazing plot twists, a poignant love story (and once all the twists are unravelled, you will understand how poignant), a fascinating primer on code-breaking and the amazing effort mounted at Bletchley Park, a glimpse into the birth of the modern computer, and an historical exposition of a turning point in the Second World War. This is, in short, one of the best books I have ever read and I say that without embarrassment or exaggeration. I actually read through the under-4 star reviews to try to understand how someone could not love this book and, in my opinion, they provide only the flimsiest justification for their ratings but anyway there's no accounting for tastes. If you love suspense, if you are intellectually stimulated by an intelligent and entertaining description of code-breaking and the practitioners recruited for this top secret project, if you appreciate psychological portraits of fascinating characters, and you enjoy plot twists that you will not see coming but which are both intellectually and emotionally satisfying, then this book is for you. Enuf said.Book Review: The origin of digital era
Summary: 5 Stars
Harris has a distinguished and unique style in writing a thriller in a historical environment. Taking into account the Bletchley Park was among the most challenging tasks undertaken during wartime, and cryptography among the most elusive problems analysts had to deal with, the result is highly interesting, even if the thread reels out a bit slow. Several components contribute to the global structure: the academic remembrances of the main character (the mathematician Tom Jericho, through which you can detect the underlying and haunting figure of Turing), entangled with his sentimental troubles, the faithful description of activities and organization of Bletchley Park, echoes of U-Boot war, hints of events placed at the beginning of digital calculators (in a sentence, it is mentioned the possible construction of a calculator using transistors in place of relay-based "bombes")A must read for people who has appreciated Fatherland.
Book Review: A different Spy novel
Summary: 5 Stars
Some years ago I read a spy novel where the main characters needed to escape from Nazi Germany with some info on the bad guys they'd stolen. It was very entertaining, but for me kind of silly because I'd just read a book on the British codebreakers, and I knew the information had gotten to the Allies by much more mundane means. Robert Harris turns all of this on it's head and even makes it suspenseful. Enigma is the story, in novel form, of the British codebreaking effort that won WW2, to a large extent anyway, for the Western Allies. Interwoven into the plot is a hunt for a German spy among the codebreakers, and while that story is interesting (and the solution and motive bring out another story less often told) the main focus is a novel version of David Kahn's Seizing the Enigma, with all the suspense of the codebreakers grappling with the Kriegsmarine's codes as the convoys approach the U-boats... It's a very good book.Book Review: Communicates the Challenges, Captures the Thrill
Summary: 5 Stars
For captivating true life signals intelligence there are several books one can go to, including those by James Bamford on the American system (Puzzle Palace, Body of Secrets) but for really getting into the enormity of the challenges and the thrill of the individual code-breakers when they succeeded, this is the book I recommend.
It completely ignores the enormous contributions made by the Poles (who gave the English two Enigma machines at the beginning of the war) as well as the heroic deeds of Tommy Brown (youngest George Medal winner at 16, survived with code materials taken from a sinking German ship), but I have found no better novel to communicate the absolute goose-bump emotional roller-coaster that the Bletchley Park gang experienced.
If anything, this novel convey a human side to code-breaking that offsets the modern-day obsession with massive computers.
Book Review: More dimension on history
Summary: 5 Stars
MR. Harris has served the interested reader well by fleshing out the circumstances surrounding the Enigma code machines of WWII. There is a wealth in this book of understood and well-explained procedure which the Brits used to crack the Nazi codes, handled with a mathematician's comprehension and a novelist's finesse. The characters who populate the novel are well-drawn anti-heros, all believable enough to smell them, and to feel their persistent discomfort in trying circumstances. The most stereotypically heroic figure is detestable. The oddness of the individuals who inhabited Bletchley Castle, where the codes were cracked, is well-delineated. When Winston Churchill visited Bletchley, he remarked that he had said to turn over every stone in search of geniuses, but hadn't expected to be taken literally. This book compares favorably with the best of John Le Carre. It is a relentlessly intelligent book.