The Killing Code

by Ellie Marney

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.

• ISBN10: 031633958X
• ISBN13: 9780316339582
• Publish Date: 20 September 2022
• Publish Status: Active
• Publish Country: US
• Imprint: Little, Brown & Company
• Format: Hardcover
• Pages: 384
• Language: English
• URL: https://hachettebookgroup.com/titles/ellie-marney/the-killing-code/9780316339582/

Reviews

[bookstagramofmine]

The Killing Code reads really well! It's fast-paced, exciting, and set in the middle of a war. We have three things going on simultaneously, Kit's secret, some romance, and the murders of young women employed by the government. 

 

Despite being for the war effort, this facility also seems to be a  woman's haven. There is the freedom to work with other like-minded women, talk, even if some of them resent that for them, and dream about something better after the war.

 

While Ellie Marney wrote an excellent book, it's closer to three and a half stars than four for me. Someone with so much experience should have been able to pick up on certain things. For instance, while I loved Kit and Moya overall, sometimes I felt like Kit was snapped into becoming super flirty with Moya when the rest of the time, she came off pretty shy. I couldn't understand how her personality flipped in those moments. I also loved Violet and Dottie as characters, but I felt like Violet was used to superficially exploring race issues in the US. I think Violet was the only black girl we interacted with in the book, which is odd. Even worse when you realize that Moya was a supervisor who could have tried to at least foster more significant interaction between these units. 

 

On the plus side, Raffi was fun, and I loved that he was quick to understand why Kit wasn't dancing. After Kit first suspected and dismissed, who she thought the killer was, I was sure it was that guy. Many misogynists hide like this, and we find out far too late. I did like how well researched the book was and Kit's secret. That added an absorbing layer to their actions and the risks involved.