The Roman Enigma

The acclaimed novel of spies, code-breaking, and intrigue in World War II Italy, THE ROMAN ENIGMA is now presented in a new paperback edition.

Italy: 1943.

The Target: Enigma, the German’s bafflingly complex enciphering machine. Its code was unbreakable until ULTRA put the key to winning the war in Allied hands.

The Plan: A devious double-cross to convince the Germans that their cipher is still secure. Making full use of powerful Vatican connections, it entails sending an agent into Nazi-occupied Rome … and making sure he is caught.

The Agent: Roberto Rovere, a young Italian-American OSS agent. The Allies have cold-bloodedly plotted every detail of his capture and death except one: the Germans want him to escape - alive.

What raises this novel above many another World War II yarn is the way Murphy combines political realism and religious idealism to question the deepest ideology of them all, a blind nationalism that justifies all excess in the name of the greater good.

• The Washington Post

Fascinating and important.

• Andrew M. Greeley, author of The Cardinal Sins