5 November 2022

Review: THE KILLING CODE, Ellie Marney

  •  this book made available by my local library through Libby
  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ Little, Brown Books for Young Readers (September 20, 2022)
  • Hardcover ‏ : ‎ 384 pages
  • ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 031633958X
  • ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0316339582
  • Reading age ‏ : ‎ 14 years and up
  • Grade level ‏ : ‎ 9 and up

Synopsis (Amazon)

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. 

My Take

Aimed at a young adult audience, this story combines historical detail with a thriller/mystery. At times the fact that it has a YA audience peeks through, but in general the story is plausible and well-told. 

Two girls employed by the government have recently been murdered and group of four decide to try to track down the murderer. They use their skills as code breakers working in a secret US facility to develop a profile of the murderer and liaise with a journalist from the Washington Post to entrap him.

Running in the background are a couple of other strands: Kit Sutherland's hidden background, the role of girls in codebreaking, and the treatment of black girls despite the role they are playing.

Rating: 4.4 

About the Author
Ellie Marney is an New York Times bestselling author of crime thrillers. Her titles include the Aurealis-winning None Shall Sleep, White Night, the Every series and the companion novel No Limits, and the Circus Hearts series. Her books are published in ten countries, and have been optioned for television. She’s spent a lifetime researching in mortuaries, talking to autopsy specialists, and asking former spies about how to make explosives from household items, and now she lives quite sedately in southeastern Australia with her family. Her latest book is The Killing Code, an intense mystery about female codebreakers hunting a serial killer against a backdrop of 1940s wartime Washington DC. You can find out more about Ellie and her books at www.elliemarney.com or online @elliemarney.

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