The Enigma Girl

De: Henry Porter

Narrado por: Imogen Church

From internationally bestselling author who is “filling the gap left by Len Deighton and John le Carre” (Evening Standard) comes a propulsive espionage thriller for fans of Mick Herron, Daniel Silva, and Olen Steinhauer. Meet disgraced MI5 agent Slim Parsons, a character who—like Lisbeth Salander—will sear your soul.

Slim Parsons is all but burned. When her last deep-cover job for MI5 ended with a life-and-death struggle on a private jet, she went on the run from her deadly target—a conniving businessman and money launderer codenamed “Hagfish.” Now she’s back at home, in hiding from her angry bosses in the Security Service, who have accused her of being overly violent and unsuitable for the role of an MI5 operative.

But after several months off the grid, Slim is called back to another job—Operation Linesman—where she is asked to infiltrate a news website Middle Kingdom whose explosive articles clearly show that they’ve hacked into the most high-security government databases. She accepts the assignment on condition that the Security Service searches for her missing brother.

But Linesman turns out to be anything but simple. Slim uncovers a curious connection between the Middle Kingdom hackers and the legendary Bletchley Park codebreakers. Her new colleagues are becoming suspicious of her intentions, and Hagfish is out for revenge and threatening MI5 itself as it all comes together in a shocking crescendo.

And all the while she is being watched by someone even deeper in the shadows than she is.

Sch a good read

I enjoyed every thing about this listen. The writing was superb, story vey fun and unpredictable and the narration was grand. More of these please

What Fun!

Archaeology,spies and Bletchley Park! I really enjoyed it and will look for his next book.

Great female main character!

I liked Slim and her continuous focus on doing the right thing even when it was hard and scary.

Wanted to get to the end but didn't want it to end

First of all, the narrator, Imogen Church, is fantastic. Truly a great talent, and a perfect match for this novel.

The story is amazing and the writing is superb. I cried at least twice, which really sucked because the second time I was driving and wiping tears and blowing my nose, which made it challenging to drive. I was also worried that other drivers would see me crying. It is not a tearjerker though. The situations that Slim has to go through made me completely empathize with her emotionally, though she dealt with her feelings a lot better than me.

The central character is an incredible female secret agent who kicks ass, but without ever feeling ridiculous or over-the-top. She feels real. Her courage is incredible.

It’s a 17-hour listen, and while I couldn’t wait to find out how it would finish, I also didn’t want it to end because it was that good. There are very few books I’ve experienced that can claim that feat.

I’m also heading to Milton Keynes again in May to visit Bletchley Park, which is probably why I picked this up in the first place.

Because of this book, I will listen to everything else I can by Henry Porter, starting with A Spy’s Life (and so far, it’s awesome). He is an extremely talented writer. The story never made me question the plausibility of the events. While the AI creation element pushed things a bit, given what I know about AI development, it never pulled me out of the story.

This is one of those rare books that made me genuinely sad to reach the end. All I can say is that Mr. Porter better keep writing, because I’m not ready to be done with Slim Parsons.

Fantastic Character!

Moreover Grayman… slim has arrived! Slim is everything. She bold, audacious, and completely unhinged🤩 as more than a few of her colleagues stated throughout the story. I cannot wait for book 2. I have to listen again because I know I missed a lot of the action.