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32 of 32 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
another thoughtful thriller, October 5, 2000
In his terrific speculative thriller, Fatherland, Robert Harris plopped us down in the middle of an alternate reality where Nazi Germany had won a stalemate with the United States and Hitler was about to celebrate his 75th birthday in 1964. The book was plausible and very exciting, but best of all it confronted readers with the similarity between Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union and implicitly asked why the west fought one and aided the other. Now, in Enigma, he shows that he can work equally effectively against the backdrop of actual events and still broach big ideas. It's February, 1943 and Tom Jericho, a brilliant young Cambridge mathematician and protégé of Alan Turing, has already suffered one nervous breakdown under the pressure of working to break secret Nazi codes. Now he's summoned back to Bletchley Park because the U-boat code, known as Shark, which was previously decrypted due to an epiphany of his, has suddenly been changed just as an enormous supply convoy from America is setting out for Britain. Despite his delicate mental state, it's felt that he'll be valuable just for his totemic value and to reassure the higher-ups that all the best men are working on the problem. Complicating matters is the disappearance of Jericho's ex-girlfriend, Claire Romilly, who it appears may have tipped off the Germans that their codes had been cracked. At any rate, some must have betrayed this vital secret, and, even as the supply convoy sails towards one of the biggest U-boat wolfpacks ever assembled, Jericho sets out to discover who the traitor is and where Claire has disappeared too. The author too manages a difficult feat as he balances the mystery plot with healthy dollops of WWII history and cryptographic technique. Jericho's quest for Claire is exciting enough, but it's the details about the Enigma machines, which produced what the Nazis believed to be an unbreakable codes, and the British success in breaking them anyway, which really make for fascinating reading. Then, as if that weren't enough, when Harris introduces the reason that someone at Bletchley would assist the Nazis, he returns to some of the troubling moral and geopolitical questions that he first raised in Fatherland. It all makes for a thoughtful thriller that entertains, enlightens and provokes the reader. GRADE : A-
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25 of 26 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Communicates the Challenges, Captures the Thrill, October 22, 2001
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.
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8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
THIS XLIH BOOK YHWQ ISOK XXXX (Code for, June 30, 2002
LET me start off by saying that if I was a cryptanalyst in the midst of World War II who spent day after day tackling codes, working with bombes and hunting for cribs, I probably would have loved this book. But since I am a thirty-year old attorney whose most intimate contact with codes consists of the back of a cereal box, this book left a little to be desired. SHORTLY after being introduced to Tom Jericho, the book's protagonist, the reader is thrust into the world of a cryptanalyst - one whose entire life revolves around breaking the German code called "Shark." The problem for the reader starts immediately as the decoding process is inadequately described. Not nearly enough detail is given to the intricacies of the Enigma device used to create the Shark code. Worse yet, the "explanations" of this process often includes series of jumbled letters which serve to explain the significance of each aspect of translation. I was unable to ever connect the explanations with the process itself. Sadly, the breaking of various codes is significant in both plotlines and consequently takes away from the flow of the book. IN short, Jericho has returned to Bletchley - to his job as a cryptanalyst - for the purpose of breaking Shark a second time as the Germans mysteriously realized that the British had broken the original code. The plot is interesting (and makes for a good story), but unfortunately character development is weak. When the mystery unfolds at the end of the book - I realized that I knew hardly anything about the villain or his motivation. I had to go back and reread about this particular character to determine whether I should have known more than I did. Fortunately, the entire mystery is explained in the final chapters, but I was disappointed that in a book about code-breaking, I was never given the opportunity to crack the case on my own. I recommend that you pay close attention to everyone in Jericho's life. AS plotline one reaches its peak, it becomes exciting - particularly as Harris describes the U-boat activity as they approach conveys of British and American ships. The cryptanalysts find themselves fighting a battle that cannot really be won. "Success" will result in devastating consequences. Overall, I enjoyed this plot. PLOTLINE two is altogether different. Jericho is pining away for Claire who disappeared upon his return to Bletchley. He meets and befriends her roommate - Hester - as they search for Claire and learn more about the dark secrets she kept prior to her disappearance. Harris' talent shines through more clearly in this plot. His description of the interaction between Jericho and Claire, Claire and Hester and Jericho and Hester is excellent. The reader soon realizes that this story is literally separate from the other series of events described above. The surprise ending is worth the wait. OVERALL, I would give this book three and a half stars - primarily because of the poor character development and (perhaps perhaps my own ignorance of) the complexity of the codebreaking process. I do, however, look forward to reading Fatherland in the future.
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