Between Silk and Cyanide: A Codemaker's War, 1941-1945 by Leo Marks

[lightreads]

Between Silk and Cyanide

5/5. Memoir of the guy who, in his early twenties, ended up running the codes and ciphers division for SOE during the war.

Tremendous. One of those books that dances delicately along that thin line between hilarity and tragedy. Marks is absurdly funny throughout, and an excellent writer. And he's telling the stories of many agents he trained and equipped and briefed who were going to their deaths. Sometimes where Marks knows they will be taken and tortured as soon as they land, and can't say a word. He copes by writing poems (it makes the codes stronger if they are based on poems only the agent knows and that a German couldn't look up). Many of them are funny. Some of them will break your heart.

I hesitate to say that I . . . it's overstating it to say I doubt the veracity here, because I don't. It's more that many people are preternaturally witty, which, well. Fair enough. The truth is, I don't care. This is an extraordinary story that even a scattering of truth – and I do think it's substantially more than that – renders even more remarkable.

One of the best things I've read this year.

Comments

[thefourthvine]

I LOVE this book. It’s so so great. (I also once, uh, based a Kirk/Spock AU off of it because I cannot help myself but whatever.)

[lightreads]

Oh god, the AUs this lends itself to. Bond/Q is only the lowest hanging fruit.

[cyphomandra]

Isn’t it fantastic? It was the best thing I read last year (and infinitely better than a terrible book I read this year that had a romance between thinly disguised versions of Marks and Khan, which made them neither Jewish or Muslim and had them both survive)

[lightreads]

I'm pretty sure it was your review that put this book in the pile for me, so thank you for that.

[musesfool]

Such a great book!