The Cypher Bureau is historical fiction; this book by Eilidh McGinness was inspired by the life and codebreaking work of Marian Rejewski. McGinness lists four sources for her writing about Rejewski: “An Application of the Theory of Permutations in Breaking the Enigma Cipher” by Marian Rejewski (1977), Enigma ou La Plus Grande Enigme de la Guerre by Gustave Bertrand (1973), Notre Espion Chez Hitler by Paul Paillole (2013), and Enigma: How the Poles Broke the Nazi Code by Władysław Kozaczuk and Jerzy Straszak (2004). McGinness has selected incidents from the references and used those incidents as a framework onto which her novel has been built. The Cypher Bureau consists of 53 short chapters. The chapters and an epilogue average a little less than five pages per chapter; some chapters are as short as one page. Typically each chapter is built on one historical incident. The Cypher Bureau seems more like a movie script than a novel. Although each incident that is the foundation of a chapter is historical, the dialog and the details are invented by McGinness. This means that the reader’s sense of the characters and their accomplishments is based on the author’s impressions of them, and McGinness seems to have an agenda: to highlight the work of the Polish codebreakers, in this case, at the expense of the British codebreakers. She mostly avoids getting anywhere near the details of Enigma or the methods used to break it. The following two quotes exhibit how McGinness contrasts the Polish successes with the British work. These quotes come from Chapter 7 and are set during a meeting in Paris between Rejewski and Alan Turing in January 1940. At that meeting Turing delivered Britishmade Zygalski sheets to the Polish codebreakers who were then in France. Here is how McGinness imagines that meeting. Rejewski speaks first:

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Eilidh McGinness 对密码局的评论

密码局是历史小说；Eilidh McGinness 的这本书的灵感来自于 Marian Rejewski 的生平和破译工作。McGinness 列出了她关于 Rejewski 的写作的四个来源：Marian Rejewski (1977)、Gustave Bertrand (1973)、Notre Espion Chez 的 Enigma ou La Plus Grande Enigme de la Guerre “An Application of the Theory of Permutations in Breaking the Enigma Cipher” Paul Paillole (2013) 所著的希特勒，以及 Władysław Kozaczuk 和 Jerzy Straszak 所著的《谜：波兰人如何打破纳粹法典》(2004)。麦金尼斯从参考文献中选择了事件，并将这些事件作为她小说创作的框架。密码局由 53 个简短的章节组成。章节和结语平均每章不到五页；有些章节只有一页。通常每一章都建立在一个历史事件上。密码局看起来更像是电影剧本而不是小说。虽然作为章节基础的每个事件都是历史性的，但对话和细节是麦金尼斯发明的。这意味着读者对人物的感觉和他们的成就是基于作者对他们的印象，而麦金尼斯似乎有一个议程：突出波兰密码破解者的工作，在这种情况下，以牺牲英国密码破解者为代价。她大多避免接近 Enigma 的细节或用于破解它的方法。以下两句话展示了麦金尼斯如何将波兰的成功与英国的工作进行对比。这些引文来自第 7 章，是在 1940 年 1 月 Rejewski 和 Alan Turing 在巴黎的一次会议上设定的。在那次会议上，图灵将英国制造的 Zygalski 表交给了当时在法国的波兰密码破解者。这是麦金尼斯对那次会议的想象。Rejewski 首先发言：