Robert Harris - Enigma

Review by Malcolm Martland 9 July 2009
The first novel of Robert Harris’s that I read was Archangel about the fictitious son of Joseph Stalin – I was not that impressed – next I read The Ghost about a ghost-writer producing an autobiography for ex British Prime Minister Adam Lang (or should that have been Tony Blair) – I enjoyed that more.
I grabbed Enigma from the Charity Shop shortly before an impending visit to Shropshire – and it was a great choice – I left it up there so please excuse me if my memory does not do justice to the novel. Set in WW2 mainly at Bletchley Park but also in Cambridge where mathematician Tom Jericho has been sent to his old college – King’s College - to recover from his mental exhaustion and to keep working out the code breaking sequences that became so important during the allies struggle to protect their shipping supply line against the German U-boat offensive. I found the descriptions of his treatment at Kings College quite evocative of a time where the College Servants thinly disguised disdain for him are over-ridden by their curiosity as to why they have been ordered to look after him by the Home Office.

There are references to the real code breaker and inventor of the modern computer Alan Turing who encourages Tom Jericho to get involved in decoding the Germans’ Enigma machines – and he goes to Bletchley Park and of course he does break the codes in a series of inspirational mathematical solutions – but in order to get enough coordinates one solution involves sacrificing a fleet of supply ships to the U-boat attacks.
I certainly did not understand some of the mathematical solutions that the author describes – but it was a very good read.