"LITERATE AND SAVVY . . . BRIMS WITH WARTIME INTRIGUE."
--The Washington Post Book World
England 1943. Much of the infamous Nazi Enigma code has been cracked. But Shark, the impenetrable operational cipher used by Nazi U-boats, has masked the Germans' movements, allowing them to destroy a record number of Allied vessels. Feeling that the blood of Allied sailors is on their hands, a top-secret team of British cryptographers works feverishly around the clock to break Shark. And when brilliant mathematician Tom Jericho succeeds, it is the stuff of legend. . . .
"A TENSE AND THOUGHTFUL THRILLER."
--San Francisco Chronicle
Until the unthinkable happens: the Germans have somehow learned that Shark has been cracked. And they've changed the code. . . .
"SUSPENSEFUL AND FASCINATING."
--The Orlando Sentinel
As an Allied convoy crosses the U-boat infested North Atlantic . . . as Jericho's ex-lover Claire disappears amid accusations that she is a Nazi collaborator . . . as Jericho strains his last resources to break Shark again, he cannot escape the ultimate truth: There is a traitor among them. . . .
"GRIPPING . . . CAPTIVATING ."
--New York Daily News
"ELEGANTLY RESEARCHED . . . Readers will find themselves perfectly placed to experience one of Britain's finest hours."
--People
"SATISFYING . . . Harris does a crackerjack job here, playing his characters' lives off historical events in surprising ways."
--Entertainment Weekly
"SUSPENSEFUL . . . FIENDISHLY CLEVER."
--Detroit Free Press

Average Customer Review: ( 83 customer reviews )
Write an online review and share your thoughts with other customers.

It's February, 1943 and Tom Jericho, a brilliant young Cambridge mathematician and protégé of Alan Turing, has already suffered one nervous breakdown under the pressure of working to break secret Nazi codes. Now he's summoned back to Bletchley Park because the U-boat code, known as Shark, which was previously decrypted due to an epiphany of his, has suddenly been changed just as an enormous supply convoy from America is setting out for Britain. Despite his delicate mental state, it's felt that he'll be valuable just for his totemic value and to reassure the higher-ups that all the best men are working on the problem.

Complicating matters is the disappearance of Jericho's ex-girlfriend, Claire Romilly, who it appears may have tipped off the Germans that their codes had been cracked. At any rate, some must have betrayed this vital secret, and, even as the supply convoy sails towards one of the biggest U-boat wolfpacks ever assembled, Jericho sets out to discover who the traitor is and where Claire has disappeared too.

The author too manages a difficult feat as he balances the mystery plot with healthy dollops of WWII history and cryptographic technique. Jericho's quest for Claire is exciting enough, but it's the details about the Enigma machines, which produced what the Nazis believed to be an unbreakable codes, and the British success in breaking them anyway, which really make for fascinating reading. Then, as if that weren't enough, when Harris introduces the reason that someone at Bletchley would assist the Nazis, he returns to some of the troubling moral and geopolitical questions that he first raised in Fatherland. It all makes for a thoughtful thriller that entertains, enlightens and provokes the reader.

GRADE : A-

27 of 28 found the following review helpful:

Communicates the Challenges, Captures the ThrillOct 22, 2001
By Robert D. Steele

For captivating true life signals intelligence there are several books one can go to, including those by James Bamford on the American system (Puzzle Palace, Body of Secrets) but for really getting into the enormity of the challenges and the thrill of the individual code-breakers when they succeeded, this is the book I recommend.

It completely ignores the enormous contributions made by the Poles (who gave the English two Enigma machines at the beginning of the war) as well as the heroic deeds of Tommy Brown (youngest George Medal winner at 16, survived with code materials taken from a sinking German ship), but I have found no better novel to communicate the absolute goose-bump emotional roller-coaster that the Bletchley Park gang experienced.

If anything, this novel convey a human side to code-breaking that offsets the modern-day obsession with massive computers.

14 of 16 found the following review helpful:

Great book!Dec 03, 2000
By Robert Steele "Culture vulture"
Robert Harris has done it again, after the triumph of Fatherland he has written another masterpiece thriller about the British codebreakers during The Battle of the Atlantic. Harris's hero Tom Jericho is a great mathematician and codebreaker at Bletchley Park who is out of the game due to a nervous breakdown, but is called back to Bletchley Park when the Allies find out that the Germans have changed their codes all of a sudden. The reason Jericho is called back is that since he broke the Germans's code last time, his superiors think he can do it again, but there is another element that puzzles Jericho: The girl he was having a relationship with, Claire Rommily, has stolen some cryptograms and disappeared into thin air! Suddenly the Forign Office begin an investigation on her, is there a spy in Bletchley Park? Jericho (with the help of Claire's housemate Hester Wallace) intends to find out just that. It would be a crime for me to give away any more. One of the things I loved the best in this book is Tom Jericho's character, he is a normal human being. Not Superman (as some of my favourite authors tend to do, Tom Clancy, Frederick Forsyth, Robert Ludlum etc.). He is not particularly good looking(although I hear that Dougray Scott has been cast as him), suave or strong. I believe that with this book, Harris has proved himself to be the succesor to John LeCarre in passing on moral messages without actually writing them out loud! Please continue to delight us Mr. Harris!

7 of 7 found the following review helpful:

Great book - technically good and no loose plot endsSep 19, 2006
By Bluewater cruiser
With my long background in computers (since '66) and my longtime interest in codes, codebreaking & Enigma, I started this book with some trepidation - as most books of this ilk are poorly written and technically annoying. Not so with this book. It's a genuinely good read with some good plot twists - in fact, you don't know where it's going until the end. Too bad there aren't more good books like this around instead of all the Rambo trash.

6 of 6 found the following review helpful:

Elegantly written and refreshingly originalAug 29, 2005
By David Starr-Glass
This is an intelligent, well-constructed book that had me eagerly turning pages right up until the end. Robert Harris confidently takes us into the world of cryptography and cryptographers, frantically pitting human ingenuity, artificial intelligence, mechanical and electronic "bombes", and "Turin machines" (both the revolutionary precursors of our present-day computers) against predatory German submarines set on devastating merchant convoys in the Atlantic. It is an exciting, informed, and enjoyable read.

The book has been very carefully researched and accurately conveys the bleakness and weaknesses of war-weary Britain in the early 1940s. We are led into the strange and taunt world of Bletchley Park, the WWII center of British cryptographic efforts to crack the various versions of the German Enigma code. Historical fact and personalities (such enigmatic genius Alan Turin) are convincingly interwoven with a multi-leveled story of espionage and betrayal. The writing is excellent; a beautifully told story.

Towards the end of the book there is a quotation from the mathematician G. H. Hardy, "a mathematical proof, like a chess problem, to be aesthetically satisfying, must possess three qualities: inevitability, unexpectedness and economy." What is true of mathematical proofs and chess solutions is also true of good thrillers. Harris has provided us with a brilliantly different espionage book where unexpectedness is present to the final page, and a graceful economy of writing that creates a smooth and enjoyable read. Unlike many books, this is one that I will be rereading next year.

See all 83 customer reviews on Amazon.com