I have been researching Renaissance codes and recently came across Batista Bellaso. He may end up in my novel, actually! A book that I read to discover more, that I found very helpful, is The Code Book by Simon Singh. It delves fairly deeply into this cryptologist and his contemporaries and his impact on codes for several centuries. It is a fascinating, but very accessible book that I definitely recommend if you want to learn more about the history of cryptology.