Enigma cover art

Enigma

From the bestselling author of Conclave

 Preview

Get 30 days of Standard free

£5.99/mo after trial. Cancel monthly.
Try for £0.00
More purchase options
Buy Now for £5.17

Buy Now for £5.17

About this listen

Brought to you by Penguin.


Bletchley Park: the top-secret landmark of World War Two, where a group of young people were fighting to defeat Hitler, and win the war. March 1943, the Second World War hangs in the balance, and at Bletchley Park a brilliant young codebreaker is facing a double nightmare. The Germans have unaccountably changed their U-boat Enigma code, threatening a massive Allied defeat. And as suspicion grows that there may be a spy inside Bletchley, Jericho's girlfriend, the beautiful and mysterious Claire Romilly suddenly disappears.


© Robert Harris 1995 (P) Penguin Audio 2009
All stars
Most relevant
As a reader fascinated by the Bletchley Park events during the Second World War I was interested to read a fictional mystery based on that place at that time. I'm pretty familiar with the facts surrounding those events so it was a considerable disappointment that this story is so riddled with factual inaccuracies. The characters are plausible enough, but all involved, including the police, seem utterly to ignore the 'need to know ' mantra which is one of the most fascinating aspects of that period of history. A top secret establishment which fails at every turn to be anything but secret is just not plausible to me. The story is well read and it moves on at a good pace, it just fails to suspend disbelief for me.

Factual inconsistencies

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
A really good angle on the Bletchley Park theme. I enjoyed the background detail and it is right up there with Robert Harris’s original ideas. The plot did become a bit hard to follow towards the end and needed a lot of loose ends tying up rather rapidly. But still good fun

A great story

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
Robert Harris manages to make the most obscure subject matter accessible. An absorbing story with plenty of twists and turns.

Another Superb Story

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
Occcasionally dull with a lot of statistics and all the research dropped in leading to a thrilling denouement as all the puzzle pieces are put together. Not his best but sufficient to hold the attention. How the Brits survived the grey meat and weak tea described remains an enigma.

Between Mediocre & Good

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
The film was disappointing in that it degenerated into a chase across Scotland, something Buchan (39 Steps) did better. The book is more interesting, building up the bizarre world of Bletchley Park as they seek within acute claustrophobia and developing paranoia to break the German naval codes the better to protect the convoys from the U-boats. But different agendas impinge upon their engagement with the Battle of the Atlantic, for they are also listening to Wehrmacht signals from the eastern front, where something very strange has been unearthed in the territories over which the Nazi extermination teams are putting down all resistance and more. The devil has found traces of someone worse, at least comparable, if you are Polish. It gradually becomes clear that our new Soviet allies have been up to something none of the Allies want to hear about. And so the chase is on, to stop the U-boats and so break the naval seige of these islands, while coming to terms with what has been going on along the eastern front. Different members of the team to break the German code react in different ways, but all are going to be changed utterly by the remifications of what they are discovering about war at sea and death along the eastern front. Since this book came out much has changed as regards our knowledge of what happened when Poland was divided between the Nazis and the Soviets. The book was a novel way into the complexities of why one of the worse moments of the Second World War was so long hidden not just by the perpetrators but by almost all concerned. It suggests too that no aspect of the war was totally sealed against what was going on elsewhere: this truely was a world war. And most people have to survive with little knowledge to go on, with every choice often little more than the lesser of the two evils. Read/listen to the book (and then read Fatherland for an exploration of an even greater though hidden trauma).

Enigma - exploring the complexities of Katyn

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
See more reviews