The Poet in the Code Room

Merriam Press World War 2 Fiction. A war and spy novel as well as a mystery, this is the story of a poet recruited in the spring of 1943 to write poetry for coding and decoding messages in the OSS. Jake Finny, a college senior in the reserves, finds himself dealing with a series of unexplained deaths in the Message Center. As he moves from Washington to Algiers to Italy, fearing for his life. He goes AWOL and seeks those committing these crimes, aided by the Italian girl his friend wanted to marry. As the pressure on him intensifies, he is haunted by the head of Counterintelligence, a famous poet whom he can’t determine whether he is sympathetic to him or thinks he is implicated in these deaths. He has talked to him about the connection between poetry and counterintelligence and only later realizes to his sorrow what an important part the man has played in his life. The novel is not only about Jake and his situation but also about the workings of OSS and the conditions in Italy during the war.