Total Books: 3 Total Pages: 1164 Longest: 656 Shortest: 191
Genres: 3 (Biography – 1, Historical Fiction – 1, Mystery – 1)
With our trip to Ontario and then hurricane clean up and other activities in July, I didn’t get a lot of reading done.
Up first was Kate Quinn’s The Rose Code. I read her book, The Alice Network, a few years ago and really enjoyed it. The Rose Code, an historical fiction novel, takes place during WWII and a few years afterwards and centers around three women who worked at Bletchley Park (BP) where British Intelligence focused on breaking the Axis powers’ codes.
The three women came from very different backgrounds and had jobs in different sections (huts) at BP but roomed together. Initially, they were very close friends, but they went their separate ways after a misunderstanding primarily due to and because of the secrecy required between sections. A couple of years following the war, one of them sends a coded message to the other two asking for help. They are forced back together to figure out who at BP had been a traitor not only to their country, but to them specifically.
As an historical novel, while the three main characters are fictionalized composites of real-life people, there are many real-life people included in the story, including Winston Churchill, Alan Turing, and Prince Philip of Greece (yes, the future husband of the future queen!).
I really enjoyed this book as it detailed what it must have been like to work at BP, and the stresses of the secrecy required by those who worked there. BP was so important to the success of the Allies winning the war, but it was especially difficult on the men who worked there and were unable to explain to outsiders why they were not in uniform serving their country!
Next, I read Anthony Horowitz’s Moriarty. From Amazon: The game is once again afoot in this thrilling mystery from internationally bestselling author Anthony Horowitz, sanctioned by the Conan Doyle estate, that explores what really happened when Sherlock Holmes and his arch nemesis Professor Moriarty tumbled to their doom at the Reichenbach Falls.
If you are a Sherlock Holmes fan or a Horowitz fan, then this is a must read!
I closed out the month revisiting Bletchley Park, but this time reading the memoir of Sara Baring, who one of the main characters in The Rose Code was based on. The Road to Station X: From Debutante Ball to Fighter-Plane Factory to Bletchley Park, a Memoir of One Woman’s Journey Through World War Two is Baring’s memoir of her time at BP. Kate Quinn had this book listed in The Rose Code’s bibliography.
It was written from her memory not long before she died in 2013 at age 93 and I believe published posthumously. There were definitely stories that she recorded in her memoir that Quinn used in The Rose Code. I’d highly recommend reading both books.
Until next time, read what pleases you!
Notes By Nancy 
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