The Killing Code by Ellie Marney || Queer Historical Mystery With Female Codebreakers

The Killing Code

A historical mystery about a girl who risks everything to track down a vicious serial killer, for fans of The Enigma Game and A Good Girl’s Guide to Murder.

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 Signals Intelligence facility in Virginia. 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.

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Perfect for readers who want:

• Historical fiction set during World War II in America
• Strong, smart female leads supporting each other
• Murder mystery that needs to be solved
• Interesting information about female Codebreakers

Many thanks to Little, Brown Books for Young Readers and TBR & Beyond Tours for a copy in exchange for an honest, unbiased review.

I just want to say, right off the bat, how could anyone resist a book called The Killing Code? I mean, does that not just grab your attention and make you ask questions? The fact that this book happens to be about female codebreakers during World War II just adds to the coolness factor of that title to me. Plus, it’s fall. If there’s ever a good time for murder, it’s now. Erm . . . I mean in fiction, of course.

The Killing Code is the queer historical mystery I didn’t know I needed, with a strong all-female cast, a queer romance, a killer on the loose, a stolen identity, and all set against the backdrop of World War II.

The mystery was a pretty easy one to solve, and I had figured the murderer probably halfway through the book, so if you’re looking for something that’ll keep you stumped, this probably isn’t it. That being said, I really didn’t care too much that I’d already figured it out, because this book was just delightful in general! I absolutely love the strong female characters and the way they come together and support each other. Marney manages to write a positive story of female friendship, despite the rather dark setting, and without shying away from the fact that women weren’t always treated well during this time period, especially Black women.

Welcome back to World War II era America, where women are begrudgingly allowed to join the workforce and there’s a killer on the loose . . . but eh, who can take that seriously, because he’s only killing women, the silly creatures?

All joking aside, this is going to be a very frustrating setting to read, and it’s meant to be that way. Marney does a wonderful job of capturing the struggles of life in World War II America for women (even the privileged women), without beating the reader over the head with it or focusing on it. Just the simple act of a woman wearing pants is seen as rebelling (the nerve!).

I absolutely love World War II books, but I realized that I don’t read that many set in America. Probably because most of the nitty-gritty interesting stuff was happening elsewhere at the time. However, Marney reminds readers that there were still amazing things happening in the US. Like, for instance, Codebreakers, which were largely super intelligent women supporting the war effort.

If you enjoy historical fiction, this book is a brilliant blend of a historical setting (plus some really interesting facts that you may not know about Codebreakers) and a compelling mystery, so it’s sort of the best of both worlds in that regard.

Our protagonist, Kit, has a pretty big secret that just may get her killed . . . and she’s not the only one. She’s pretending to be someone she isn’t.

And I don’t just mean in that way that all adults do when they’re out pretending to be functional members of society. I mean in the sort of a heinous crime especially in times of war way of identity theft. I doubt anyone could really blame Kit for her actions. She was given a chance to improve her life and escape her circumstances and she took it. Not only did she take it, she thrived in it.

Still, Kit must keep her secret hidden at all costs. Which is difficult when you’re investigating a serial killer, like you do. The stakes in this book (not just for Kit but all the Codebreakers) are ridiculously high. Marney builds a delicious amount of tension, with danger around every turn, especially since it’s not quite clear who can be trusted and who can’t.

I absolutely adored the female leads in this book and the way they always had each other’s back and supported each other! More of this in YA, please!

I feel like it’s all too common to see females, especially, pitted against each other or trying to tear each other down, as if there can be only one. So it’s extremely refreshing, especially in this setting, to see four women come together and take care of each other. It isn’t just our main characters, though. It’s clear that all the Codebreakers do their best to look out for each other.

The biggest way this is shown, of course, is when our lead quartet (is it called a quartet? That’s what I’m going with, and in my brain, they can just, you know, break out in song every time they find a clue, like it’s an episode of Blue’s Clues. I’m perfectly okay with this) decide to investigate the murder of one of the Codebreakers, which they’re soon to discover is actually a series of murders of government girls. Since the police aren’t taking this seriously, for various reasons (most of which have to do with racism and sexism, of course), they take it upon themselves to keep their fellow women safe.

On the subject of solving murders, the way they do it, of course, being the Codebreakers they are, is by looking at it as a puzzle. Stripping out all the excess noise and focusing on what they know as they piece things together. These women are smart. I appreciated the way they methodically and logically looked at everything and went about the mystery, along with the parallels to their day jobs as Codebreakers.

This wouldn’t be historical fiction if it didn’t do justice to a different time, and I think Marney manages that, keeping in mind the racial and gender tensions going on in the United States at the time and how they impact the women and their investigation.

One of our quartet, Violet, is Black, which means the girls can’t always meet up where they want to because segregation. Of course. It also means the police are completely ignoring one of the murder victims because she, too, is Black, and Black murders don’t count. Obviously.

It isn’t entirely overt, more in the subtle ways that interrupt their investigation, but Marney manages to slip a little social commentary in there. Especially in the way the girls accept Violet while, at the same time, acting like the racism she faces doesn’t happen where they’re from, when she points out that it likely does and they just hadn’t paid attention to it.

As is often the case, even though I liked the idea of a queer historical mystery, the romance in this wasn’t it for me. It was a bit insta-lovey and awkward.

I was excited when I realized it was a queer romance, especially given the setting and time period. However, I was a bit disappointed when the girls went from embarrassed flirting to suddenly being a close item with the flip of a switch. It felt very sudden and out of nowhere, even if it was clear that they liked each other. They went from 0 to 100 in the course of a chapter, basically.

Not gonna lie, but I was also kind of disappointed that the romance was too easy. Which, okay, romance is never easy, but especially not for queer people in the 1940s. There was very little tension or friction to this romance, with all the people around them who knew about them just blatantly accepting it. The only real mention that it would potentially be an issue was that they couldn’t kiss in public. Since the rest of the setting had been done so well, it really stood out to me that the struggle of queer folks was just kind of glossed over.

About Ellie Marney

Ellie Marney is a New York Times bestselling and multi-award-winning crime author who has gone behind the scenes at the Westminster Mortuary in London and interviewed forensic and technical specialists around the world in pursuit of just the right details for her brand of pulse-pounding thrillers.

Her titles include The Killing Code, None Shall Sleep, the Every trilogy, No Limits, White Night and the Circus Hearts series. She has lived in Indonesia, India and Singapore, and is now based in Australia with her partner and their four sons.

Ellie has been involved in the creation of the national campaign called #LoveOzYA to promote and advocate for Australian YA literature. She contributed to the critically-acclaimed Begin End Begin: A #LoveOzYA Anthology, and co-runs the popular #LoveOzYAbookclub online. She also co-coordinates an online info-sharing group for Australian women self-publishers. She teaches writing and publishing through Writers Victoria, advocates for Australian women’s writing as a Stella Ambassador in schools, and is a regular speaker at festivals and events.

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