The Enigma Girl
“The Enigma Girl offers flawless plotting, smooth writing, vivid characters and crises, and an escalation of suspense into threat and explosive danger.”
Wouldn’t it be nice if working for your nation’s government meant being confident you were on the side of justice, and that your work would be honorably appreciated? Alice “Slim” Parsons just invested two years of deep cover work for MI5, then had to stage a solo escape that left her holding the blame for a failed operational ending—although at least she can hope that she may have done deadly damage to the man trying to rape her on his private jet.
Instead, back in England, she’s officially blamed for her traumatic escape, and her job seems to be going down the tubes, while the actual criminal (whose bad deeds she uncovered) is walking free. After a very unpleasant verbal slap in the face, she does get some praise for her service. “That’s some kind of acknowledgement but she understands she’s being softened up and they’re going to let her go. Gently maybe, and with a pay-off—but it’ll be a defeat all the same.”
But she’s mistaken. Instead the powers that be want her in a new undercover assignment that relies on her previous career as a journalist: They want her to infiltrate a progressive and independent news organization and find out how the group is digging up government secrets. It’s good to be wanted, and she’ll do the assignment, if her organization will also dig into what’s happened to her long-missing brother, to get some closure for her family. Deal. “Can you give me an idea where I’ll be based?” Answer: Milton Keynes, home of Bletchley Park, which was the British government’s code and cypher school during World War II. History fans will hear the “click” as the book’s title suddenly makes sense: Enigma was the name of the famous code to be broken, and now Slim’s got to break another.
“You’ll have full protection,” her assignment director assures her. “It’ll be just a short time and you are miraculously suited to this role.” That’s because the leaders of this wild news organization all seem descended from Bletchley Park’s original coders and decoders. So is Slim—her mother’s family stories finally get official confirmation, since her great-grandfather and grandfather had roles in protecting the codebreakers. She’ll fit in.
Slim fits in better than anyone might have guessed. Her new colleagues feel genuine, warm, animated, smart. And even though they clearly are testing her on less important stories, not yet trusting her with their core mission, she’s got more support that she could have imagined. Soon she’s doing far more than uncover significant stories in her new role—she’s stepping up to rescue people from gang-related slavery and accidentally revealing her Secret Service training.
In this post-Le Carré spy novel confronting today’s Britain, Henry Porter shines, as he has before in earlier awarded and praised thrillers (Brandenburg Gate, The Bell Ringers). Through the slow revelation of Slim’s core integrity and passion for justice—something even she may not have realized fully, until this assignment forces her to weigh her loyalties—Porter demonstrates how the most meaningful sense of agency can erupt and pull factions around it into a very different conflict of values.
The Enigma Girl offers flawless plotting, smooth writing, vivid characters and crises, and an escalation of suspense into threat and explosive danger. Ignore the odd cover and the outdated use of “girl” in the book title, because this is a must-read for espionage fans ready for the roller-coaster thrills of the not-so-cold wars of our time.