The NYT reports today on a British best-selling novel about breaking the Enigma codes, published this month in the US: Enigma, by Robert Harris, Random House. Harris interviewed many of the people who worked at Bletchley Park, and, most challenging, had to wrestle with complex mathematics to explain how the codes were broken ... by an elite comprised of an eccentric band of British and refugee intellectuals, aided by young women carefully picked from upper-class British families. So, Mr. Harris was asked, is the book a celebration of British amateurism? "There's a bit of that," he conceded. "Just as the British benefited from that tradition, the Germans were undone by the ruthless military efficiency, which made it easier to read their messages. The idea of brains taking on brute strength does have a certain romantic appeal." More than one reviewer said Harris was a thriller writer in the British tradition of Eric Ambler, Len Deighton, John Le Carre and John Buchan. "Harris has fashioned a story that is as humane, intelligent and gripping as documentary fiction can get, the critic Anthony Quinn wrote in The Financial Times. This is a story of intelligence, romance, twisted logic and necessary compromise," Peter Millar wrote in The Times of London, adding that it was "altogether top-class stuff."