Books: Berlin Game by Len Deighton (1983)

“It’s the early 1980s, and a highly placed agent in East Germany codenamed "Brahms Four" (one of Britain's agents behind the Iron Curtain), demands that he needs safe passage to the West. This request sends a ripple of panic through the SIS, and Bernard Samson (a former field agent now working behind a London desk) is tasked with assisting in the escape. Early on, Samson is confronted with undeniable evidence that there is a traitor among his colleagues working for the KGB. A number of suspects are presented: Dicky Cruyer, his incompetent supervisor (whom Samson despises); Bret Rensselaer, an American who has built his entire career around the work of Brahms Four, and who had been spending an inordinate amount of time with Samson's wife, Fiona (also an intelligence officer)and Frank Harrington, the 'rezident' (head) of the Berlin field unit. Then again, it could be any member of the senior staff at London Central, including the Director-General himself.”

I was not planning to read this yet, but I’ve had copies of the trilogy for a while, and placed them in a more prominent space on my TBR pile. Had not Amazon taken all day to deliver my package containing The Avenger’s book, I would’ve gotten to it sooner, but here we go. 

Berlin Game is part of the Game, Set and Match trilogy, being succeeded by Mexico Set and London Match, and followed by the Hook, Line and Sinker trilogy and the final Faith, Hope and Charity trilogy. Deighton's novel Winter (1987) is a prequel to the nine novels (though released before the second trilogy began), covering the years 1900-1945 and providing the backstory to some of the characters.

I do have intentions of getting through these books over the next several months. 

One thing I noticed as I read this excellent thriller is the main character of Bernard Samson, who seemly Deighton later said was “inclined to complain and exaggerate so that we have to interpret the world around him". This makes him and unreliable narrator, and the author added that "Readers who take Bernard’s words are missing a lot of the intended content". 

Anyways, Berlin Game is a classic Cold War era spy fiction, maybe not on par with John le Carre, but a well paced, not too dark look at 1980s Cold War (in some ways, Mick Herron’s Slough House series could be a sort-of sequel/parallel universe of this series, his set in the 21^st Century but with obvious implications that Jackson Lamb was a young agent back in the early 1980s and would’ve slotted easily here in Deighton’s universe).  

Also, there is very little in the way action, but the last quarter or so makes up for that. I like Samson a lot, but he seemly understands than he’s been sitting at desk too long and missing some obvious stuff (like figuring out who the mole was). Deighton chose to focus on the difficulty of getting anything done when all the players are essentially independent operators, pursuing their own goals, rather than a well-oiled team. This is especially difficult in a profession where silence and/or misdirection are highly prized. And it’s also here where it’s revealed that this Brahms Four had saved Samson’s life nearly twenty years earlier.

It’s got a lot of atmosphere, but unlike Forsyth’s The Day of the Jackal, not much in the way action set pieces. But still a fine book.

Books: Dead Ringer (Jacob Asch #4) By Arthur Lyons (1977)

“Jacob Asch is called in by boxing promoter Jack Schwartz to help out Carlos Realango, an Argentine heavyweight whose career is on the skids. Carlos has been receiving threatening phone calls, and his manager and mistress, brassy blonde Susan Mezzano, thinks her husband is responsible. It seems a routine case until the down-and-out boxer is shot at Moonfire Ranch, a fancy brothel owned by Susan's husband. The police are calling it justifiable homicide, but Asch smells murder and something more than a lovers' quarrel.” 

The fourth Jacob Asch novel follows the same sort of set-up the three previous has, which has him be hired to investigate a person who generally ends up dead. And while investigating, Jake not only seemly gets beat up a few times, but as well, the murder becomes less important (though it’s still front and center) as writer Lyon’s leans into all the “guest-cast” so to speak, and their dark and mostly icky moral codes. 

But here, in Dead Ringer, the story is a bit overspun and goes on longer than seemly necessary. Yes, we get long-winded takes and Chandler-esque prose, but a lot of it seems designed to make the tale longer and much deeper than it really is. The problem with some of these nior thrillers is everyone are just horrible, trope filled people. Take the city of Reno, which is seems like a dead end town, mashed with potential mob influences and dirty cops who can (and probably do) get away with falsifying records, arresting and beating up people they don’t particularly like – it’s all something we’ve seen before. 

In Lyon’s universe, there is not much good, which sort of puts Asch above everyone. It’s a little odd that no matter where Asch goes, who he investigates, he is the Angel among the dirty devils of the world.

Since this was the last book I owned, I may be a while before I revisit and purchase the seven remaining volumes. But this is not a happy world and maybe it’s time to find something a little less nihilistic.

Books: The Killing Floor (Jacob Asch 3) by Arthur Lyons (1976)

“David Fein has a problem -he's a compulsive gambler. Lately, gambling has completely taken over his life. By the time he takes in Tortorello as a business partner, he is in big trouble. Like all men who are like this, he’s taken out a "quick loans" but even that has gotten out of control and now he can't cover his debts. Jacob Asch is contacted by Fein's wife, who hasn't come home for four days and she's frantic. Jacob figures Fein's probably sleeping off a four-day drunk. What he hadn't counted on was the body on the killing floor” 

All is not what it seems here in the third book featuring Asch. We open with a visit to the city of Vernon, a town five miles south of Los Angeles proper and id the nearest separate city to downtown Los Angeles. The population was 112 at the 2010 United States census, the least of any incorporated city in the state. Its population nearly doubled to 222 by the 2020 census, making it the second least populous city in the state, after Amador City. This makes me wonder how many people lived there in the mid-1970s when this book was written. The city is primarily composed of industrial areas and touts itself as "exclusively industrial". Meatpacking plants and warehouses are common. “Vernon stinks. It always stinks,” Jacob muses as he drives into the town in the opening chapter. 

Anyways, I know the publishers continued to sell Lyons as a more modern Raymond Chandler and with a panache style of Ross MacDonald, but I still see Jake as Jim Rockford – well, the R rated version of The Rockford Files. There’s just something about our smart, empathic hero with a wisecrack here and there that makes me feel this is more Rockford than Travis Magee. It’s all sexist as well – the women are drawn pretty horrible here, both the bad and the good ones, and that can be distracting. But Asch’s work is through, smart, and more logical than the way the police approach these crimes. Even the plot is plausible, but then there is another scene, like in book two, where two thugs (and a half a dozen from book two) are easily defeated by a wispy 180lb private investigator. So, somewhat plausible. 

I will add that I think a pattern is developing here in Lyons writing. We get the set up, then the investigation, have Asch ask all sorts of questions, go up avenues that seem to point in the right direction, only to find out what you thought was connected, really isn’t. He pulled that in book two and did it again here. We’ll see what happens in book four (and the last one I currently own) to see if he continues this style.

 

Books: All God's Children by Arthur Lyons (Jacob Asch #2) (1975)

“Jacob Asch, the out-of-work reporter turned detective. Asch is hired by Robert Haynes to find his eighteen-year-old step-daughter, Susan Gurney. The search for her leads Asch into Los Angeles' fringe population: first to the Word of God commune where Susan lived among "Jesus Freaks," then to the man who "deprogrammed" her and brought her home just a few days before her disappearance, finally to her boyfriend and the members of his motorcycle gang known as "Satan's Warriors." 

When I read the first book in this series, The Dead Are Discreet, back in November 2024, I assumed that 2025 would be filled with reading all eleven books in the series. But it’s July 2026 and I’m finally getting to the second book (and own two additional ones as well).

A quick recap: The Dead Are Discreet introduced readers to 34-year-old Jacob Asch, an embittered but nonetheless witty and compassionate, half-Jewish former investigative reporter for the (fictional) Los Angeles Chronicle. After being jailed for six months because he refused to rat out a story source, Asch drifted reluctantly into a gumshoeing career, and found that it fit him. 

As I read, (and not sure I saw this with the first book), I was struck by how much Jacob Asch in All God’s Children could be a cousin to Jim Rockford –well, a more put together and less snarky Jim Rockford- if only because the plot borrows a villainous trope that most cop and detective shows of that era used as storylines from the mid -1960s through the 1970s: the dangerous, murderous outlaw biker gangs and religious cults (which sprung up in California due its cooperative weather). Asch is a fairly ordinary guy working as a private investigator, but is also somewhat out of depth and when you mix a rich family searching for a runaway child, along with a cultish commune, and a thuggish motorcycle gang (the sequence at the Chop Shop set in Culver City is a prime example of Asch being a bit naïve and outright dumb – something James Gardner did in The Rockford Files for six seasons. That action sequence alone shows you how much Asch is more a thinking detective) things are bound to go sideways. 

Asch is also cynical (perhaps why I like him), does hard work, has the somewhat required smart mouth, but ultimately he is a detective who stumbles along as the clues dictate until, finally, something begins to break and the picture comes into focus.

There’s a bit more violence than I generally like, and even in 1975, foul language rolled off everyone’s tongues easily, but despite the sort of trope-filled story, it’s still worth a read.

 

Books: The Hook By Donald E. Westlake (2000)

“Wayne Prentice is a midlist author who must face the hard fact that the world no longer values his work. He has watched a pseudonym, two careers, and his sales disappear and feels like it may be time to quit writing for good. On the other hand, Bryce Proctorr fires out one bestseller after the next and has a multi-million dollar deal for his next book. Unfortunately, his divorce has given him writer's block and Bryce cannot solve his dilemma as his deadline rapidly approaches. So, Bryce proposes a partnership to Wayne: give Bryce his unpublished manuscript and the two of them can split the advance 50/50. There's just one small catch -- Wayne has to put Mrs. Proctorr six feet under.” 

The Westlake Reader points out, The Hook is essentially a stripped down version of Patricia Highsmith’s Stranger On A Train. While this book was released in 2000, they speculate that Westlake probably read –or reread- that tale (Highsmith had also died in 1995, so it’s fairly possible he did one or the other). Or they take another speculative stab and mention –though there is nothing to back this up- Westlake may have already been approached to write the screenplay for Ripley Under Ground, which was Highsmith’s second novel featuring the demonically complicated and murderous con artist. The thing with screenplays, though, they usually go through a longer gestation period, mostly through revisions and re-writes, so it possible between 1997 and 2000, he was also working on adapting that novel and reread Train (and eventually a movie was made, and while Westlake got a screen credit for that troubled production -it was made in 2003, but not released until 2005- most if not all, was re-written by William Blake Herron). 

As I read The Hook, I could not get over the feeling this book and The Ax are connected. Yeah, they have similar titles and (theoretically) take place near enough to each other that they could share a related universe, but more so that Burke Devore in The Ax and Bryce and Wayne here are all desperate people doing terrible things because the world around them regards them and their fortunes with complete, and very brutal, indifference. 

And while The Hook is not as a vicious take down on publishing industry that was the more humorous A Likely Story, it was decided that a follow-up book to The Ax (which was well received and well reviewed) could not go back to what he was more well-known for - a humorous capers. As the Westlake Reader adds, “his editors, publishers, agents, spouse, etc, all told him that whatever book came out after The Ax under his own name had to be special, couldn’t be humorous, couldn’t be Dortmunder, couldn’t be some sexy tropical romp. It had to be bloody, hard-edged, suspenseful, and thought-provoking.  In other words, they wanted him to prove The Ax wasn’t a fluke. The general sentiment was something along the lines of ‘This was your greatest commercial and critical successes ever; now go do it again.’” 

Now that was something typical with the publishing industry – just rework what worked before. 

What works here is not the murder itself –which becomes almost insignificant, with only brief mentions and police detectives investigating it here and there –but the relationship between Bryce and Wayne and psychological toll that it has on both men's lives. They are two men connected by a bond that neither wants to break (but probably should). The ending I sort of saw, but I’m not happy with it. But then again, that may be the point. The books themes of desperation, jealousy and the morality within the book industry abound here. You end up not really rooting for anyone here; even the secondary character will evoke little sympathy.

But it also just another example of the gifts that Westlake was – that despite the cruelness and darkness, the fact that a murderer with go unpunished- I had to see how it all played out.

Books: Children of Time By Adrian Tchaikovsky (2015)

"In the far future, Dr. Avrana Kern is the head of a science team orbiting a terraformed, previously uninhabitable, exoplanet that she hopes will be named "Kern's World." The team is preparing to release a genetically designed nanovirus onto the new world to accelerate the evolution of a group of monkeys –designed to become “a race of uplifted sentient aides and servants [who] would welcome their makers.” However, the troubles of Earth have followed Kern, and when the agent of an anti-technology group try to stop her, and she flees aboard an escape pod before anyone else can get to her. The payload of monkeys is jettisoned from the ship in a landing craft, yet it burns up in atmospheric entry. With no monkeys on Kern's World, and its ecosystems originally seeded with a minimum of possible competitor species for Kern's experiment, the nanovirus spends its time infecting and altering a multitude of living creatures, a notable example being jumping spiders (Portia labiata)—referred to in the book as Portiids. Dr. Kern is left stranded in orbit awaiting rescue, where an imprint of her mind is stored with the pod’s AI system, waking periodically from stasis of several millennia. But that opens the doorway to madness.” 

When it comes to hard science fiction, I generally have found myself avoiding them if only because the real science used in these books sometimes slows down the books narrative (The Expanse series based is science in real terms, but it was also an action/adventure series with cartoonish villains). But I was challenged by a co-worker to read at least the first book. And Children of Time, which has three tomes released over the years, has a lot of real science and epic world building. Its premise is actually intriguing; though using spiders as characters fills out arachnophobia pretty well.  

There is some predictable stuff here as well, with humanities constant squabbles with those who see technology helping the world versus those that would see it destroyed (Genocide was genocide. He thought of the Old Empire, which had been so civilized that it had in the end poisoned its own homeworld. And here we are, about to start ripping pieces of the ecosystem out of this new one.”). The evolution of the jumping spiders is fun, and its clear Tchaikovsky wanted to make them three-dimensional and not just scary monsters. But it’s here where the world building begins to crumble for me –as well the timescale for this all to happen. How do they become scientists? How do they create the ability to see Kern’s orbiting ship and the stars beyond? There is uplifting a species then there is creating something for a plot point. 

We’re not given any direct references to when this series set. It has to be far in advanced centuries that the (apparent) multiple Arks sent from Earth (which brings up another problem I thought about –if the planet was so devastated because they had no tech or raw material, how did they launch the Arks to begin with?) with people can be put in cold storage, woken up, and then put back in cold storage. Our human bodies are rather fragile and it seems very odd that people can be put in suspended animation for something like 1,800 years and wake up like they’ve taken a nap and no ill effects on tissue, the brain, and our muscles.

I could find myself reading the further books, if only because Children of Time reads like 600 page prelude, and while I’m ambivalent about the ending, it still has a fascinating premise.