Transcription by Kate Atkinson **** (of 4)

Juliet Armstrong, orphaned at the age of 17 just as Hitler's Germany is rolling across Europe, is scooped up by MI5. Her job is to serve as a typist, a role, of course, only a girl can fill. MI5 occupies two adjoining rooms in a small apartment complex in London. In one, Godfried Toby, an MI5 agent meets British citizens sympathetic, and perhaps outright allies, of the Third Reich. Listening devices are implanted in the walls and voices are recorded  in the adjacent apartment for Juliet to transcribe. 

With time Juliet is asked to infiltrate the Fifth Column of British fascists under disguise and with additional time, actually five years after the war ends, Juliet is still enmeshed in spy work, only now ferrying eastern bloc scientists to the west and plying communist sympathizers with false information. Or maybe it is top secret information. Or maybe her handlers were always communist sympathizers. Or maybe Godfried Toby works for no one. Or anyone. 

Being employed by MI5, it turns out, even as a 17-year-old typist, turns into a job with no escape clause. What makes Transcription such fun is not the spy craft, or even the plot, loosely modeled on true events, but rather Juliet Armstrong's sheer cheekiness and Kate Atkinson's deft revelations of what is transpiring in Juliet's sassy brain.