The Killing Code
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5.0 • 1 Rating
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- $2.99
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- $2.99
Publisher Description
A historical mystery about a girl who risks everything to track down a vicious serial killer—for fans of The Enigma Game and Last Night at the Telegraph Club.
Virginia, 1943: World War II is raging in Europe and on the Pacific front when Kit Sutherland is recruited to help the war effort as a codebreaker at Arlington Hall, a former girls’ college now serving as the site of a secret US Signal Intelligence facility. But Kit is soon involved in another kind of fight: government girls are being brutally murdered in Washington DC, and when Kit stumbles onto a bloody homicide scene, she is drawn into the hunt for the killer.
To find the man responsible for the gruesome murders and bring him to justice, Kit joins forces with other female codebreakers at Arlington Hall—gossip queen Dottie Crockford, sharp-tongued intelligence maven Moya Kershaw, and cleverly resourceful Violet DuLac from the segregated codebreaking unit. But as the girls begin to work together and develop friendships—and romance—that they never expected, two things begin to come clear: the murderer they’re hunting is closing in on them…and Kit is hiding a dangerous secret.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
WWII codebreakers turn homicide detectives in this intriguing historical mystery by Marney (None Shall Sleep). In 1942, at Arlington Hall, a Washington, D.C., finishing school for wealthy girls, Kathleen Hopper is a paid companion and nurse to Katherine Sutherland. As Katherine's health declines, however, she encourages Kathleen to take on her name following her death, hoping that Kathleen can use her status to create a new life for herself. Now in 1943, 18-year-old Kathleen—who has assumed Katherine's identity and goes by Kit Sutherland—joins codebreakers Moya and Dottie in decrypting enemy missives for a secret U.S. Intelligence facility that has commandeered the school as a codebreaking center. When Kit finds a fellow codebreaker's murdered body, and more young women turn up dead, the girls endeavor to catch the killer, but as they get closer to the perpetrator, Kit risks imperiling her secret life and a deeper harrowing truth. Marney utilizes captivating prose, an intriguing and complex premise, and a fiercely independent female cast to ably detail a little-known chapter of WWII history that ensnares the imagination and invites further exploration. Most characters read as white. An author's note concludes. Ages 14–up.
