In the Shadows of Enigma, by Alex Rosenberg

This imaginative narrative about a woman’s decades long struggle with World War II secrets is an engaging compilation of the many consequences suffered by that war’s survivors.

There are two secrets in In The Shadows Of Enigma. The first, hinted at by the title and then explained in the preface, is that Germany’s secret Enigma code had been cracked by the Polish intelligence service in 1942 and given to the western allies, but not announced for almost thirty years, leaving the Russians to assume, after they’d captured the code in Berlin, that it was still usable. The second secret is that Rita, the novel’s primary protagonist, in 1947 found her son, Stefan, who she’d given to a woman in 1940 to save him from the Nazi roundup of Jews, and that Rita chose not to reveal that she had survived the Nazis, which would have led to Stefan’s return to her, his birth mother. Ignoring the wartime flashbacks, the story’s plot crosses many international boundaries: Austria, France, Spain, Australia, the United States and, at the end, Switzerland. In addition to Rita, there are even more characters than locales, each with a backstory: the main ones being, Schulke, the deNazified, yet deranged, Gestapo man turned German policeman, Gil, Rita’s common law husband, Geoffrey St John, Rita’s classmate at university and years later her boss in an Australian government post, Phil Morton, Rita’s fellow employee at the United Nations, Frania Sajac, Stefan’s foster mother, and, finally, Stefan Sajac, an officer in the German BfV and Rita’s son.

The novel expertly weaves together a complex plot involving its many characters and locations. During the years through which the story moves, many historical events are carefully included, such as the Hungarian uprising against the Russians, the Suez Canal conflict, and the Cuban Missile Crisis, which add an element of authenticity to the plot. The characters cross paths repeatedly, but never confusingly, and their interspersed time lines develop an excellent suspense to the story. Yet, character development is not as robust as one would like to see in a literary novel. The many years and different locations are a distraction. One wishes that New York had arrived sooner, and that Australia had been briefer. The number of characters, each given a point of view during the plot, dilutes the presentation of Rita. Would that the reader could learn more about her than her thoughts and feelings that only directly support the plot. In The Shadows of Enigma is billed as a standalone sequel to the author’s The Girl From Krakow. What that means is that Rita’s background is to some extent repeated from the earlier book. The better approach, however, may have been less repetition and more development of Rita’s character from the end of the earlier book. Yes, there are some insights from Rita regarding her past. But so many years pass and insights of her current circumstances are few. These comments are not to say the book is not a great read. On account of its story and suspense, In The Shadows Of Enigma is very enjoyable.

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