Rating: 
Summary: Witty, Compelling and Chilling
Review: This book is a witty, and compelling memoir of Great Britains cryptographic war against the Germans. It was written by code- breaker Leo Marks. Son of the proprietor of the famed bookshop at 84 Charing Cross Road. In spite of being written with a light hand, I found this book to be an interesting, moving and at times downright chilling account of the little-known SOE intelligence section as seen by the author as a brilliant and brash 22 year old prodigy whose job was to monitor code security so that agents in occupied Europe could report back as safely as possible.Though Marks rarely ventured out of his basement office, his book describes how he worked frantically to develop codes that the Nazis could neither crack nor imitate. I would however, be interested to read an account of what went on in the SOE during these years from his supervisor’s POV. I suspect that their accounts would be slightly different since over years memory can become very selective and self serving. I think that Marks with his tendency to ignore rules, to act on his own based on his own understanding of events, while well meaning, often did not take into account that he may not be aware of the whole picture. He must have caused the people in charge of SOE many a sleepless night. The term loose cannon comes to mind here. The parts that broke my heart was account of the agents who were “blown,â€Âlost to torture, prison, the camps, and execution. I will never forget the accounts of Violette Szabo, Noor Inayat Kahn, the girl who could not lie and Flight Lieutenant Yeo-Thomas, known as The White Rabbit. The incredible bravery of these people just cannot be imagined. What I had real problems with the account of the agents who were sent into Holland when the SOE knew their covers had been blown before they were ever sent in. The rationale was that if they did not send them in they would not alert the Germans that they knew that the Dutch Resistance Movement had been “outed†I have a real hard time with this kind of thinking. For me every life has value, and every person whose life is lost represents a tragedy to some family. I realize that Military leaders probably have to distance themselves from thinking of the humanity of the people under their command, but I still cannot handle the thought of sending people deliberately to their deaths without even a chance of surviving. This came close to ruining the book for me because I am such a wuss. I also found the accounts of the in-fighting between the various departments very depressing. All the department heads who were supposed to be fighting on the same side who were instead fighting tooth and nail for their own little turf really got up my nose. Especialls as these people gave little or no thought to how these turf battles affected the people who were really fighting the war really got up my nose. Especially the Free French! This book was a real page turner for me. I loved the writing even though some of the explanations of the mechanics of code development and breaking went flying over my head.
Rating: 
Summary: Room for improvement
Review: This is quite a lengthy book, about 600 pages, and at times it does seem to drag on. The topic itself is quite interesting--during WWII, the author at the young age of 22 shows himself to be a brilliant codemaker/codebreaker, and eventually rises to the highest levels, despite his unconventional relations to authority figures. The book is not really about coding, however. The book presented a side of WWII that is not often heard--that of the courageous agents dropped into occupied territory to sabotage and to prepare the Resistance for D-Day. It was especially sad to note that often the author, while preparing them for deployment, knew that their capture by the enemy was imminent, because the enemy had already captured many of their comrades and was forging messages back to London in their names--however, Marks' superiors were unwilling to acknowledge this, for reasons which remain in debate to this day. I have to agree with many of the other reviewers on several points. Marks' wit, while humerous at times, does tend to get old by the end of the book. The author was unnecessarily vulgar at times, as well. In addition, it was sometimes tedious to wade through all the acronyms and code-names.
Rating:
Summary: Room for improvement
Review: This is quite a lengthy book, about 600 pages, and at times it does seem to drag on. The topic itself is quite interesting--during WWII, the author at the young age of 22 shows himself to be a brilliant codemaker/codebreaker, and eventually rises to the highest levels, despite his unconventional relations to authority figures. The book is not really about coding, however. The book presented a side of WWII that is not often heard--that of the courageous agents dropped into occupied territory to sabotage and to prepare the Resistance for D-Day. It was especially sad to note that often the author, while preparing them for deployment, knew that their capture by the enemy was imminent, because the enemy had already captured many of their comrades and was forging messages back to London in their names--however, Marks' superiors were unwilling to acknowledge this, for reasons which remain in debate to this day. I have to agree with many of the other reviewers on several points. Marks' wit, while humerous at times, does tend to get old by the end of the book. The author was unnecessarily vulgar at times, as well. In addition, it was sometimes tedious to wade through all the acronyms and code-names.
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