The Enigma Girl by Henry Porter is a tale of intrigue and espionage. Slim Parsons is an agent for the security service, also known as MI5. When she ends up locked in a life and death struggle while on a plane with the subject of her investigation, known as Operation Hagfish, she finds herself running from both her attacker and her own agency. Considered volatile and potentially unstable, she spends the winter hiding with her mother while the agency decides what to do with her and with the information. Ultimately she gets pulled back in as she is assigned to a new operation, Operation Linesman, where she pulls from her former reporter background in order to infiltrate a small news group known as Middle Kingdom. Reluctant to do so, she agrees only if the agency will search for her long missing brother in order to give her dying mother closure. However, she ends up on the outs with her agency when she learns that they are pushing her to work unusually fast and refuse to actually act on the information she acquired during Operation Hagfish. When disturbing information comes to light about her operation she ends up wondering who she can actually trust.
I decided to try this one out because it actually sounded pretty interesting and I want to admit that I greatly enjoyed reading it. Unlike a lot of other spy novels this one actually seemed pretty accurate in terms of what that life is really like. It does a good job of portraying the mundane aspects of that career and while it does have the typical action and adventure it is balanced with the other aspects. One thing that I found really interesting though is how Slim interacted with her agency and fellow operatives. I feel like it did a really great job of portraying how office politics, and even actual politics, can affect even this type of career. Obviously there was more to it than that but the interplay between these was interesting and not something that you frequently see in this type of work. To some extent you do but not necessarily to what you see here. Perhaps the most interesting element though was the idea of the spy being female. I don’t know about you but that is really not something that you see very frequently and it did a great job of showing how gender discrimination still comes into play in certain fields. The only thing I was unsure about was how connected certain things were as I felt like that is something that is frequently overdone for this genre. Don’t get me wrong as it did work out well for this story and ended up being very well done but it also seems like something that is overdone as well. I still enjoyed the story and am happy giving it four out of five stars.
This is a pretty good example of a spy thriller so if you happen to enjoy that type of story then you should probably consider this one. There are decent levels but not extreme levels of violence so be prepared for that and there are references to attempted assault as well. With the narrator and protagonist being female you can probably imagine what she would end up facing in her line of work so make sure you are able to handle that type of content before trying this one out. There isn’t anything overly graphic though so it should be fine for most people but I would be reluctant to recommend this book for readers under the age of about sixteen. That being said, it was a good book and you should consider trying it if it sounds interesting. If you do feel free to share your thoughts in the comments.