The Enigma Affair

A Novel

By: Charlie Lovett

Narrated by: Nicol Zanzarella

Length: 12 hrs and 6 mins

Publisher's summary

In this propulsive historical thriller from the New York Times bestselling author of Escaping Dreamland, a librarian and a professional assassin team up to solve a seventy-five-year-old Nazi mystery and stop a nefarious opponent from wreaking havoc on the world.

When small-town librarian Patton Harcourt comes under fire one morning while making profiteroles, she has no choice but to trust the mysterious assassin, Nemo, who shows up in her kitchen. Fleeing a pair of German thugs, the two form an unlikely alliance as they try to decipher a seventy-five-year-old message encoded by Nazis on an Enigma machine. Traveling to Bletchley Park in England, they enlist the aid of Patton’s old flame, Ruthie Drinkwater, an expert on Enigma. The trio soon finds themselves on the run, pursued by both the police and Ingrid Weiss, a white supremacist trying to unlock the secret of Heinrich Himmler’s research into alchemy. If Patton, Nemo, and their cohorts can survive a host of dangers—from trained killers to explosions to imprisonment—they might be able to prevent Weiss from acquiring untold wealth to promote her racist agenda.

In this fast-paced thriller with a thoroughly researched World War II background, a mismatched cadre of heroes, including an art historian, a museum docent, and a collector of Nazi artifacts, must work together to stop a ruthless and resourceful opponent. Racing across Europe, attempting to outfox Weiss and her associates at every turn, Patton and her team mount a complex operation. But can they withstand double crosses and dark secrets from Patton’s military past to defeat Ingrid Weiss and discover the secret of Projekt Alchemie?

©2022 by Charlie Lovett (P)2022 by Blackstone Publishing

Really good story

This was a really interesting spin on WW 2 and the aftershocks. I enjoyed the “is this a bad guy or is that a bad guy “ that was prominent throughout the story. It definitely kept you guessing.

One tiny nit and it was probably because I listened to this on audibles but the author used the word “said” after almost every line of dialogue. It became a little distracting, but the narrator was excellent and I really did enjoy the story.

Wonderful narration, good, solid story!

The story was great, but Nicol stole the show. Her accents were phenomenal, and I often lost track of the fact that I was listening to a person reading and instead became immersed in envisioning the story with the way she brought it all to life. Such a fun experience! I recommend!

Great story read by great narrator

I really enjoyed this book. every time I thought I had figured it out, there was another twist and turn.

the vocal performance was outstanding — the various dialects and accents were superb well done on all accounts

Please don't...

Whenever a character in an english language audiobook production speaks german (or any other language) some performances (as this one) resort to having the performer do that in (what they think might pass for) a thickly accented, i.e. bad, english. Please don't! Apart from sounding just terrible for the native speaker of the "other" language it doesn't exactly do the character credit since they do not speak any kind of bad or accented rather than just their own language.
If, as in this book, there appear "Nazis" speaking "satt vey", that, in addition, will feed into some kind of cliche like: "Terrible people must also speak a dreadful language."

Great Listening

I listened to your Poison Pen interview and and decided to purchase. well worth it.

HF collided with Thriller

A great narration with multi faceted storytelling…Mr Lovett continues to develop his characters throughout the book! I couldn’t put it down!

sometimes hard to listen

The story was pretty good. The thing that drove me crazy was the writing style. There were so many instances of "blah blah", he said. "blah." she said. "blah blah blah", he said. So many short sentences followed by he/she said or a character's name said! Maybe it's obvious who said it most of the time. Maybe try using synonyms like he observed, she exclaimed, he inquired, she responded... I didn't particularly like the narrator's voice but she did pretty well with pronunciations and inflection. I was confused that she made Alex sound like a female. I had to back track and hear that Alex was referred to as a he.

An intriguing story that was very well performed.

The historic background was woven into the story in a very engaging way. I particularly liked the range of character types, and the way they came together to form a group. I thought that the performance was particularly well done.

said Bob, .....said Ted....said Franklin....

interesting premise and predictable but honestly, give this author
a thesaurus . All in all...okay, I said.