This very English tale of making and breaking spies' coded messages should not be as fascinating as it is. At one level it's an insight into selfless actions of great courage, on another it tells of bureaucracies, bungling, and very great foolishness. A bookseller's son (his father owned 84 Charing Cross Road - later celebrated in a novel by Helene Hanff), Leo Marks became fascinated by coding messages, and extracted much amusement from tweaking the tails of the pompous. He clearly liked his SOE colleague Violette Szabo, a very brave young woman spy who parachuted into France and was shot by the Germans for spying in early 1945. Despite the grim subject, this book is great fun.