Lady Codebreaker
Alden’s new novel inhabits the world of significant U.S. military and political events in the 1920s, 30s, and 40s, including the derailing of Nazi spy networks in South America, during WWII. In 1917, Grace Smith is swept into a whirlwind romance with Colonel Robert Feldman and his cryptanalytical world. The two head up a unit at Riverbank, decoding hundreds of messages with a majority-female team of experts. The couple’s successful collaboration ends when Robert, one of America’s most brilliant cryptanalysts, is sent to SIGINT headquarters, where his highly classified work takes him into a very dark world. Grace’s subsequent fight to prove herself equally worthy is thwarted by male condescension time and time again. Eventually hired by Coast Guard Intelligence during Prohibition, she wages war on smugglers, bootleggers, racketeers, and mobsters, who are costing the government millions in unpaid tax revenues.
Lady Codebreaker is a cracking good read. The novel’s main theme involves endless hours of tedious puzzle solving and analytical work, the details of which are about as exciting as watching grass grow. Recognising this, Alden knew her novel had to become more than tracking Grace as she untangles endless lines of gibberish. With admirable success, she opens up a remarkable decades-long love story, tied into a military/naval spy thriller. Grace’s struggle to prove her underestimated brilliance in a man’s world, and her wish to serve her country, juggled with her deep love for a man broken by his 40 years of government service, make for a poignant and stirring, sometimes heart-pounding read. The prologue, set in 1958, presents a nuanced picture of Grace’s daily struggle to pull her husband from the ‘dark abyss of extreme melancholia’ and suicidal ideation, his fragile mind irrevocably fractured after Pearl Harbor. Alden handles it all with tenderness, compassion and truth, and I was deeply immersed throughout.
