In the Enemy's House: The Secret Saga of the FBI Agent and the Code Breaker Who Caught the Russian Spies
Written by Howard Blum
Narrated by David Colacci
4.5/5
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About this audiobook
In 1946, genius linguist and codebreaker Meredith Gardner discovered that the KGB was running an extensive network of strategically placed spies inside the United States, whose goal was to infiltrate American intelligence and steal the nation’s military and atomic secrets. Over the course of the next decade, he and young FBI supervisor Bob Lamphere worked together on Venona, a top-secret mission to uncover the Soviet agents and protect the Holy Grail of Cold War espionage—the atomic bomb.
Opposites in nearly every way, Lamphere and Gardner relentlessly followed a trail of clues that helped them identify and take down these Soviet agents one by one, including Julius and Ethel Rosenberg. But at the center of this spy ring, seemingly beyond the American agents’ grasp, was the mysterious master spy who pulled the strings of the KGB’s extensive campaign, dubbed Operation Enormoz by Russian Intelligence headquarters. Lamphere and Gardner began to suspect that a mole buried deep in the American intelligence community was feeding Moscow Center information on Venona. They raced to unmask the traitor and prevent the Soviets from fulfilling Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev’s threat: ""We shall bury you!""
A breathtaking chapter of American history and a page-turning mystery that plays out against the tense, life-and-death gamesmanship of the Cold War, this twisting thriller begins at the end of World War II and leads all the way to the execution of the Rosenbergs—a result that haunted both Gardner and Lamphere to the end of their lives.
Howard Blum
Howard Blum is the author of the New York Times bestseller and Edgar Award–winner American Lightning, as well as Wanted!, The Gold of Exodus, Gangland, The Floor of Heaven, In the Enemy's House, and most recently, The Spy Who Knew Too Much. Blum is a contributing editor at Vanity Fair. While at the New York Times, he was twice nominated for a Pulitzer Prize for investigative reporting. He is the father of three children, and lives in Connecticut.
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Reviews for In the Enemy's House
79 ratings5 reviews
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5On the edge of my seat the entire time I read this book...and it is a true story! The time and trouble and worry and concern of the agents is remarkable! Everything they face is like a multi-layered puzzle! Their ability to connect people and events and situations is amazing...thank goodness we have them!
1 person found this helpful
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5This is an excellent book with lots of bibliography background info. In the prologue, I highly recommend it.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Very detailed book. If you are interested in the ATOMIC spies working in the US during and after WWII, this is an important book. It goes into great detail about the recently declassified VENONA files and the people who caught the spies. I will be looking for other books by this author.
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5This book didn't have the holding power as some of Blums works. i really like the author but this book, well, it just maybe was too disjointed for an audio book. Still worth reading but there are lots of lost thoughts, dead ends, just boring add-ons about the main guy.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Another story of counter-intelligence from Blum; he's also the author of "Dark Invader," his story of World War I espionage. Here, we have a combination of World War II/Cold War espionage, told from the point of view of an FBI agent and his Army Security Agency ("Arlington Hall") colleague, as they work together with brain power and shoe leather to crack Russian codes, and eventually bring down the Rosenberg atomic spy ring. Interestingly, both of the protagonists believed that Ethel Rosenberg should not have been executed. A well-told story, though I have some issues with what I think are recreated situations and dialogue, no matter how well-grounded they are. An interesting counterpart to books on codebreaking by David Kahn, and some of the recent books on the Venona decrypts. Generally recommended.