Tag: codebreakers

The Bletchley Riddle by Ruta Sepetys and Steve Sheinkin

- Stephanie Leave a comment

Ruta Sepetys’s latest book, The Bletchley Riddle, is a middle grade historical fiction written with Steve Sheinkin. The cover caught my eye, but the description hooked me even further.

It’s summer 1940 and fourteen-year-old Lizzie Novis has found herself in a quandry. Her grandmother is determined to ship Lizzie from London back to Ohio to live with her, but Lizzie has other plans and believes her nineteen-year-old brother Jakob can help her. They have a shared love of puzzles and riddles, something that Lizzie believes is the key to her current problem.

Jakob is working at Bletchley Park, one of Britain’s codebreaking factories. He is currently working to crack Germany’s Enigma cipher, which isn’t going well. When he is summoned to pick up Lizzie, Jakob is not pleased. When he discovers that Lizzie will also be working at Bletchley Park, he is even more concerned as Lizzie isn’t one to follow rules and the Official Secrets Act binds everyone at Bletchley. Jakob is right to be concerned as Lizzie is determined to solve her own problem: the disappearance of their mother. They have been told that their mother died in Poland, but that story doesn’t seem believable to her at all. When codes and messages start arriving addressed to Jakob and Lizzie, she actively begins searching. Add in a mysterious investigator who is threatening Jakob and Lizzie and her hackles are up. Someone isn’t telling the truth and Lizzie isn’t having any of that. Jakob and Lizzie soon start deciphering codes at work and outside of work as they race to find answers.

What hooked me is that The Bletchley Riddle is told from both Jakob and Lizzie’s points of view. Having dual points of view showcases the emotions each character is feeling as well as their motivations for behaving the way they do. Given the differences in age, gender, and interests between the two characters and this book certainly lends itself relatable and readable to readers of all types! This is one title that I would love to see made into a series! The ending certainly leads itself that way.

This title is also available in large print and as a Playaway audiobook.

The Rose Code by Kate Quinn

- Ann Leave a comment

It is fair to say that the top-secret work done at Bletchley Park during World War II shortened the war by as much as two years and may have saved millions of lives. The extent of the achievements of the code breaking that was done there was mostly unknown until the mid-1970s. The Rose Code by Kate Quinn takes us beyond the guarded gates and brings this amazing wartime work out into the open.

The Rose Code begins in 1940 as England prepares for war. Osla, a beautiful socialite who wants to prove there is more to her than a glamorous exterior and Mab, a young woman who has pulled herself up from abject poverty, meet on the train to Bletchley Park on their first day of work. Despite their differences, they become close friends and roommates. Both start working menial tasks, but Osla’s perfect German has her promoted to translating decoded messages. Mab becomes an expert at working the automatic decoding machines which is both physically demanding and intricate work. The friends soon recruit their landlady’s daughter Beth, who is able to understand and translate intricate puzzles. All three flourish in their new jobs.

Even as the women succeed in their work, their personal lives are complicated by the war and the secrets they must keep. Osla is dating Prince Philip (yes, that Prince Philip, the future Duke of Edinburgh) who is serving in the Mediterranean; she knows of the important naval battle his ship will be involved in before he does. (Quinn based Osla on Margaret Osla Henniker-Major who did indeed date Prince Philip during World War II and worked at Bletchley Park). Mab is searching for a “suitable” husband, but falls in love instead and Beth must overcome her crippling shyness and stand up to her mother, all against the backdrop of the war.

The novel jumps between the war years and 1947 when Beth has been falsely accused of a terrible crime and is in grave danger. Her friends from Bletchley Park look past their differences and unite again to work together to try and solve one more secret. As time runs out and the Bletchley Park colleagues encounter multiple obstacles, will they be able to right a terrible wrong?

I’m a big fan of Kate Quinn; her earlier novels The Alice Network and The Huntress are a couple of my all-time favorite books. She ties major events to lesser known historical figures and brings them to life, adding great depth to the repercussions of war and conflict, of the lasting legacies and past bravery. The Rose Code is no different, with fascinating details of the vital work that went on at Bletchley Park, the women (who mostly went unacknowledged) that made so much of the code breaking possible and the great tension of the last few chapters when a new danger threatens, made for another can’t-put-down novel.