When Richard Hayes, a gifted polymath and cryptographer, was drafted by Irish intelligence services to track the movements of a prolific Nazi spy, Hermann Görtz, it set in motion one of the most remarkable episodes in Irish history.
What followed was a high-stakes game of cat and mouse that would wind its way through the capital and its suburbs, reverberate through the corridors of power, test the sympathies of those in high society, and even expand to jeopardise the Allied war effort.
Codebreaker is a riveting and deeply researched account of an extraordinary period of history – when Dublin became a hotbed of Nazi intrigue and the fate of an independent Ireland settled on the shoulders of an unassuming employee of the National Library.
Chapter 1. Shaking Hands with the Devil
Chapter 2. The German Legation Transmitter
Chapter 5. The Spy with the Microscope
Chapter 6. Joseph Lenihan and the Arrest of Hermann Görtz
Chapter 7. Glass Plates and Spy Trousers: Breaking the Görtz Cipher
Chapter 8. The German Spy from Co. Clare
Chapter 9. Hermann Görtz’s Last Stand
Chapter 10. Ireland’s Greatest Unsung Hero