The Bletchley Riddle

The book opens from 19-year-old Jakob Novis’s perspective. He tells the reader a riddle about a traveler, a soldier in enemy territory in ancient times. The soldier is searched to make sure he doesn’t carry any secret messages. They find nothing on him and let him go, but there is a message written on his scalp that is only revealed when his head is shaved. Jakob ends the chapter by saying the more well-hidden the secret, the harder people like him will work to discover it.

Fourteen-year-old Lizzie Novis introduces herself by saying she’s a good liar. She is out walking with her chaperone, Mr. Fleetwood, who is exhausted. She deliberately walked him far and fast to exhaust him before boarding a ship. Today is the last day Lizzie will be in England before she sails to America to avoid the war.

Lizzie is highly cynical, precocious, and analytical. Her mother, Willa, supposedly died in a bomb blast, but she doesn’t believe this story. Though half American, she doesn’t want to sail to America. She instead plans to stay in England and to find her mother. Lizzie leaves Fleetwood in their cabin, saying she plans to take a stroll on deck, then flees the ship before it departs.