“Samson suspects that there is a traitor within his department of MI6, due to the appearance of a memorandum which was leaked to the KGB. It transpires that it is part of a plot conducted by his wife—now working for East German intelligence—to frame his superior, Bret Rensselaer, as a KGB agent. When Samson's old friend Werner Volkmann is arrested by the East German police Samson organizes an unauthorized exchange of defector Erich Stinnes for him, but the operation ends in a shoot-out on the Berlin U-Bahn.”
A lot of London Match gets bogged down by the domestic lives of its characters – everyone seems to be having affairs with someone else and expecting Bernard to deal with it – and it gets a little tedious after a while. The episodic structure of the novel is something some readers will have a problem with, mostly because of the issues with who is screwing who and wringing of hands about Fiona’s defection and how it effects Bernard and her children. It does have some good action sequences, especially the final shoot-out around the Berlin Wall. It also has plenty of twists and turns required in this genre, but some younger readers will find the internal maneuverings of MI6 and the chess match between the West and East intelligence services of the Cold War a bit tedious.
Interestingly, Granada Television produced a twelve-hour version of this trilogy in 1988, which starred Ian Holm’s as Bernard Samson while Mel Martin played Fiona. Entitled Game, Set and Match, it was filmed on location in Berlin and Mexico, that included a large international cast with 3,000 extras and a budget of $8 million. While critically acclaimed, the ratings for the series were a disaster.
I’m intrigued enough that I will continue with the second trilogy Spy Hook, Spy Line, and Spy Sinker down the line –September through the end of 2026 is pretty well set. So I might not start them until January. I’ll probably read Winter first, which is, more or less, a prequel to the first trilogy as well as setting up the second and third –I think…
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