Catalogue copy: Three years into the Great War, England’s greatest asset is their intelligence network – field agents risking their lives to gather information, and codebreakers able to crack every German telegram. Margot De Wilde thrives in the environment of the secretive Room 40, where she spends her days deciphering intercepted messages. But when her world is turned upside down by an unexpected loss, for the first time in her life numbers aren’t enough.
I really enjoyed Roseanna White’s previous series Shadows Over England, so I was glad that her new series The Codebreakers begins by picking up the story of one of the minor characters from the earlier series. There’s absolutely no doubt that the author knows how to tell a good story. There’s lots of energy, intrigue and layers of both story and tension.
She also does well with English rather than American on the whole, though ‘sidewalk’, ‘gotten’ and ‘fedora’ appear, and a few oddly un-English phrases including ‘every pence’ rather than ‘every penny’ and some weird use of the word ‘bloke’! But I am used to sliding my reading mind around those things in books from American authors, and in this case the story is definitely gripping enough to want to keep on reading.
What I found hardest in this book was the casual approach to secrecy at the English end of the story (ie. Rather than of those in the field). Which is a shame given the amount of research the author has clearly done. Room 40 was a secret operation with much effort made to ensure that even Britain’s allies didn’t know the degree to which we were breaking German code. The author refers to the secrecy surrounding Room 40 in her very interesting notes at the end of the book, yet in the story open phone calls are made about confidential information (the telephone being a highly insecure channel), and people talk freely to others not in their immediate team about the work they are doing, and discuss their work when in places they could easily be overheard.
On the positive side, the story is nice and involved, and Margot is a wonderful character who often thinks and reacts in numbers rather than words. Her friend Dot at first appears to be frail and weak, but her character grows and strengthens through the book. Drake, the field agent whose eye is caught by Margot, is a likeable leading man. The use of numbers as key markers and almost as punctuation in places works really well. The 18 on the cover is a recurring, and key, thread. There’s lots to like about this book, especially if you like thrillers, espionage novels, or lesser known military elements novels. There’s a good solid dose of ‘whodunnit’ too.
Although as a novel aiming to accurately represent British intelligence operations during WWI I do find it wanting in some areas, I’m still greatly looking forward to reading the next in the series.
4 stars
