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Summary: Read Harris and Understand
Review: Harris has described a time in history when Britain still was able to produce genius but lacked the wherewithall to capitalize. The book describes the hardships of fighting World War II on a shoe string and the heroism of the various cogs in the wheel. It is one of my five favorite books and I have read it many times over, finding something new each and every time. Highly recomended.
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Summary: Better than Fatherland
Review: Vividly recreated portrait of Bletchly Park, offering a real historical insight into the birth of the computer age. With his prose, Harris manages to bridge the gap between the fast flowing, exciting (but throwaway) fiction of lesser thriller writers and the more literary and intense writing of John le Carre.
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Summary: History made fun.
Review: Enigma is the 2nd book by Robert Harris that I've read. Once again, he has a knack for drawing the reader in. I was very impressed with the way in which he wove historical fact into this work of fiction. I found the information about WWII to be very interesting. At times the story is flat and not too interesting, but all in all it's a good read. History buffs and mystery lovers alike can enjoy this book.
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Summary: Keeps You Reading, but A Little Slow
Review: This book never reaches a frantic pace, but it is an engrossing and interesting look at one of the most important projects of World War II, Bletchley Park's interception and cracking of the Enigma code, which saved the lives of many naval officers during the war. Tom Jericho is the main character, and he is first introduced at Cambridge, taking a break after some kind of work-related breakdown. He is forced back into the saddle after the code becomes unbreakable again. While trying to crack the code, he must also investigate the disappearance of Claire, a colleague and former lover. We find out about their relationship through flashbacks by Tom, and he must collaborate with her former roommate to find out what happened. This book is slow for about three quarters, then it goes really fast once he deciphers some messages he finds in Claire's room. This is a pretty good book for WWII buffs, but I wouldn't necessarily recommend it to my friends, because they would crave faster, more tense books.
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Summary: Clue for #13 across: 6 letters, A Puzzling thing, riddle
Review: What do you go for first in the papers - sports? business? the news?. It's one or the other for most of us. Not so with Tom Jericho, he reads none of it, he only does the crosswords. We are first introduced to this enigmatic fellow while he convalesces at Cambridge. Young, introspective, sensitive mathematically inclined and recuperating from a nervous breakdown. He's at his crosswords - is it simply a nervous trait, something to occupy the mind or is there a greater significance perhaps? A tool to keep the brain sharp? Jericho, we learn, is a brilliant cryptanalyst and having broken the German cipher code 'Shark' used by U-Boats, has cracked under the strain. It was a huge success nevertheless, bringing about a 75% reduction in Allied losses at sea. Now he's needed again. The Germans recovered quickly and realizing that the U-Boat code was compromised, they completely redid it, thus once again causing the messages flowing from the Enigma machines to be cryptic. It could not have come at a worse time. A massive convoy has set sail from America with 1 Million tonnes of cargo and thousands of soldiers on board. That's the basis for this intriguing novel. Harris weaves a few sub plots into the mix. What is the significance of the messages about a massacre of thousands of Polish officers near Smolensk, and why was the section responsible for decyphering the messages so quickly shut down? What happened to Claire Romilly? This question is of particular interest to Jericho. Claire another crytanalyst at Bletchy Park, in addition to disappearing, had prior to that, abruptly ended an affair with him. He was puzzled and still in love with her. In addition to all of that Jericho had suspicions that there was a traitor at work inside Bletchy Park. Tom Jericho, smitten was now cryptanalyst and sleuth. The resolution of these mysteries and what happened with the convoy as well as one final twist to the plot all takes place in the last chapter of the book. I found this sudden rush to resolution with all explanations coming out in one big push, a bit forced, and for me, was the only weakness in the book. The crossword puzzle completed too quickly.
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Summary: Another great book.
Review: Fantastic fictional thriller on the codebreakers in England responsible for cracking the dreaded Nazi "Enigma" code. Based on historical fact, with the right twinges for a great movie, this book was the second of Robert Harris' that I have read. I hope he keeps them coming!
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Summary: Great book!
Review: Robert Harris has done it again, after the triumph of Fatherland he has written another masterpiece thriller about the British codebreakers during The Battle of the Atlantic. Harris's hero Tom Jericho is a great mathematician and codebreaker at Bletchley Park who is out of the game due to a nervous breakdown, but is called back to Bletchley Park when the Allies find out that the Germans have changed their codes all of a sudden. The reason Jericho is called back is that since he broke the Germans's code last time, his superiors think he can do it again, but there is another element that puzzles Jericho: The girl he was having a relationship with, Claire Rommily, has stolen some cryptograms and disappeared into thin air! Suddenly the Forign Office begin an investigation on her, is there a spy in Bletchley Park? Jericho (with the help of Claire's housemate Hester Wallace) intends to find out just that. It would be a crime for me to give away any more. One of the things I loved the best in this book is Tom Jericho's character, he is a normal human being. Not Superman (as some of my favourite authors tend to do, Tom Clancy, Frederick Forsyth, Robert Ludlum etc.). He is not particularly good looking(although I hear that Dougray Scott has been cast as him), suave or strong. I believe that with this book, Harris has proved himself to be the succesor to John LeCarre in passing on moral messages without actually writing them out loud! Please continue to delight us Mr. Harris!
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Summary: One man holds the keys to England's salvation
Review: In 1943, the Axis appear to be on the run on all fronts but one - the Battle of the Atlantic, where German subs ferociously prey on shipping carrying supplies desperately needed by England. Direct combat with U-Boats - which are about as fast underwater as a man on a bicycle - only leads to greater losses. Coordinated by the German navy using a seemingly impenetrable military code, the U-Boats are on the verge of starving England into submission and crippling the war effort on all fronts. While England survives on a diet of moldy bread and jam (and whale meat), and British women concoct cosmetics out of odds and ends, teams of theoretical mathematicians struggle feverishly to decode every german transmission. Cloistered at a remote estate outside of London, and using captured enigma code breaking machines, early computers and every secret they can muster, the cryptolographers assault the code and incidentally invent artificial intelligence. For Harriss' hero, Tom Jericho, the strain proved too great, triggering a nervous breakdown and an early retirement. Forewarned of both British decryption efforts and a huge convoy of desperately needed supplies, the German's completely revamp their code and unleash a massive wolfpack of u-boats into the Atlantic. Now blind and soon to be crippled, the British have no choice but to summon Jericho back to the project. Returning, but soon wearing out his welcome, Jericho finds that the U-boats are not the only threat. Trying to reunite with a fellow cryptographer with whom he'd fallen in love, Jericho uncovers signs of espionage within the decoder's retreat in Bletchley Park. With his lover missing, and an allied convoy heading for certain disaster, Jericho turns sleuth. It's a painful and unwanted role, but Harriss manuevers his reluctant hero imaginatively, brilliantly turning Jericho's investigation into a deadly exercize in decoding the deepest, darkest code-making machine ever devised: the human heart.
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Summary: Fascinating enigma
Review: I loved the book. I can't really improve on the other reader reviews, but wanted to mention that this little known part of the war effort was credited by many historians as a decisive factor in winning WWII (and by Harris himself, who uses the failure to break the enigma codes as the reason for the allies to lose the war in his novel "Fatherland"). As such this story has an historical significance which adds to the impact of an already brilliant book.
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Summary: another thoughtful thriller
Review: 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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