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December 18, 2024 in Library Corner
By Robin Jacobson.
At a book event in 2019, a librarian posed a fateful question. She asked the assembled authors whether they might like to collaborate with another writer one day. Award-winning authors Steve Sheinkin and Ruty Sepetys say that they looked at each other, and “the idea was sparked” for what would become The Bletchley Riddle, their action-packed World War II-era novel for grades 6 and up. Praised as “historical fiction at its best’ (The Horn Book), the novel has been racking up starred reviews since its publication in October.
The Bletchley Riddle, as its title suggests, is set in Bletchley Park, a manor house and grounds located about 50 miles northwest of London. Bletchley Park was a top-secret center of frenetic code-breaking efforts during World War II as the Allies struggled to learn German battle plans.
It was at Bletchley Park that pioneering computer scientist Alan Turing and a host of associates – cryptanalysts, mathematicians, linguists, chess champions, and crossword-puzzle experts – managed to successfully decrypt German military communications sent through the infamous Enigma machines. Because of the many billions of ways Enigma could encrypt a message, Enigma communications were thought to be impenetrable.
Some call the cracking of Enigma codes the single most important Allied victory of World War II. Historians estimate that the Bletchley Park codebreakers shortened the war in Europe by as much as two years.
The novel, which takes place during 1940, centers on two teenage siblings, Jakob and Lizzie Novis. Jakob, 19, a brilliant mathematics student, is recruited by a Cambridge University professor to work at Bletchley Park. Fourteen-year-old Lizzie is supposed to be in Cleveland, Ohio, with her grandmother. But before her ship to America set sail, she escaped from Gran’s hapless steward, Mr. Fleetwood, assigned to escort her to Cleveland.
Lizzie wants to remain in England with Jakob. Together, she hopes, they can discover what happened to their mother, Willa, their only living parent. Her last known whereabouts were at the American Embassy in Warsaw during the evacuation on September 1, 1939, as Germany invaded Poland. Jakob believes Willa is dead, but Lizzie is convinced she is still alive.
The narrative alternates between each sibling’s perspective (Sepetys wrote Lizzie’s chapters and Sheinkin wrote Jakob’s chapters). Despite sharing a room at the Shoulder of Mutton Inn (a real place), Lizzie and Jakob have many secrets from each other, some chosen and some compulsory because they signed the Official Secrets Act when they began working at Bletchley Park. Lizzie has become a messenger at the park, carrying sealed envelopes between departments. In her free time, she investigates Willa’s mysterious disappearance while avoiding recapture by Mr. Fleetwood.
Jakob works the midnight to eight a.m. shift at one of the wooden huts in the park, analyzing German army and air force ciphers. Sheinkin, drawing on his experience as a master of nonfiction for young readers (Bomb, Fallout) marvelously illuminates the workings of the Enigma machine and the role of careless German operators in providing clues that enabled codebreakers to decrypt messages.
On top of his exhausting and intense codebreaking efforts, Jakob must cope with a menacing MI5 agent. Agent Jarvis is on the hunt for wartime spies; he is suspicious of Jakob because of Jakob’s not-British-enough background (Polish-Jewish father and American mother) as well as Willa’s disappearance. He suspects Willa is a German spy and accuses Jakob of concealing information about her, a treasonable offense.
To add to the drama, Lizzie and Jakob are receiving puzzling, riddle-laden messages from an unknown person who may – or may not – be Willa.
