Juliet Armstrong

Juliet is the central protagonist of Transcription, and the novel chronicles her work as a transcriber for MI5 (British intelligence) during World War II, and her struggle to live with the aftermath of her work ten years later. The novel begins in 1981 when Juliet has just been hit by a car while crossing the street, and ends with a return to 1981, when she perishes from her injuries. In between, Juliet flashes back to 1940 when she worked on an MI5 mission to entrap British Nazi sympathizers (referred to in the novel as "fifth columnists" (22)). Juliet also went undercover at this time, posing as a young woman named Iris Carter-Jenkins in order to infiltrate a ring of sympathizers and bring one of their leaders, Mrs. Scaife, to justice. While working on this project, Juliet became enamored of her boss, Perry Gibbons, who proposed to her, but turned out to...