The Enigma Challenge

Dr. Zoe Wilder is a young academic attending a cryptography conference in Madrid for the first time. She's there to present a paper, but she's even more intrigued by something called the Enigma Challenge held each year and kicked off at the conference.

"Information about the Enigma Challenge is elusive. I heard about it years ago as a graduate student, but anyone I talked to about it said, 'I've never played it, so I don't know how it works.' Internet searches reveal frustratingly little. Here's what I know: The game consists of five puzzles, and they change every year. Supposedly there's one puzzle that kicks off the game, a throwaway puzzle, at this conference."

There's an unspecified cash reward, rumored to be millions. And millions of dollars make people go to extremes.

When Zoe is the first to solve the puzzle that kicks off the competition, suddenly she has a target on her back, literally. We quickly realize that competitors will strong-arm, threaten, physically attack, and even kill to win the competition. We also realize how high the stakes are: if you enter the competition and lose, you are 'deleted', meaning your identity is wiped completely.

Zoe must flee Madrid in pursuit of the next puzzle to solve, and in doing so she enters into a loose partnership with a man named Dane Seaver. Seaver is familiar with the competition, having won it twice previously, and so he acts as a guide to fill in the blanks. As a previous winner, he's also a multi-millionaire, which comes in handy as the pair must traverse Europe as they unlock increasingly difficult ciphers to solve. It also doesn't hurt that he's "obscenely handsome," as Zoe puts it.

Comparisons to The Da Vinci Code will be inevitable, and warranted. The European setting, a symbology/cryptography professor with a photographic memory, solving intriguing puzzles while a dark element tries to stop them—one might think this is a retread...but it's not. Godfrey creates an interesting game, an even more interesting collection of puzzles, and a set of characters and circumstances that leave plenty of room for a sequel.

Where The Da Vinci Code was a straight thriller/adventure, and any romantic tension between Robert Langdon and Sophie Neveu was G-rated, Godfrey ups the spice in The Enigma Challenge. Being constantly pursued day after day accelerates the connection between Zoe and Dane, and there is no shortage of sexual tension throughout. I had joked when reviewing This Story Might Save Your Life earlier this year that it was a new genre-bending mashup of mystery and romance that we could call 'romanstery'; this one is in a similar vein, but much more of a romance+thriller. Perhaps a 'thrillance'?

The end result is a book that propels along at a breakneck pace; our main characters rarely have a moment's peace, and as a result neither does the reader. There are enough layers to separate it from average books in the space, and the heavier romance element, while more than I was expecting, actually worked within the story. We're left with an entertaining romp that kept me pinned to the page up until the final bombshell reveal. A strong start to a narrative that seems destined for future installments.