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: The Ipcress File by Len Deighton (1962)

“After a transfer from military intelligence to WOOC(P), a small civilian intelligence agency reporting directly to the British Cabinet, the protagonist of the book, works under the command of a man named Dalby. An intelligence broker code-named "Jay" is suspected to be behind a series of kidnappings of British VIPs with the intention of selling them to the Soviets, and the protagonist is assigned to meet Jay to secure the release of "Raven", a high-ranking scientist. While trying to meet Jay at a Soho strip club to negotiate Raven's release, the protagonist discovers Raven's unconscious body in a back room but is unsuccessful in trying to rescue him. For our working class narrator, an apparent straightforward mission to find a missing biochemist becomes a journey to the heart of a dark and deadly conspiracy.”

Len Deighton’s 1962 debut novel was seen as different take on spies than what Ian Fleming and others were doing when these types of thrillers were captivating readers in the late 1950s, early 1960s. First off, the protagonist is never named, though there is a sequence in the novel when someone greets him by saying “Hello, Harry.” This causes him to think, "Now my name isn't Harry, but in this business it's hard to remember whether it ever had been.” Secondly, this man is just a normal British citizen, not born into any special family, nor suave like James Bond. In other words, your basic everyday neighbor.

Like a lot of hardcore science fiction of the era, this more serious Cold War spy novel does not feature a lot of action (writer Charles Stross pointed out in his Atrocity Achieve book that he lifted a lot of the books business themes from this and other Deighton titles, as he goes on about administrative procedures and being proper good people and villains). It’s a lot of talk, along with a deep dive of endless prose about British bureaucracy. While the plot does feature some travel, it’s not as globetrotting as James Bond would do, and while the stratagem to brainwash groups of people is based in some truth, the plausibility is stretched here.

Deighton wrote five novels featuring Harry who is not Harry (though the 1965 film version starring Michael Caine called the character Harry Palmer), but for a book praised as literary thriller, one that set the standard for this genre, The Ipcress File failed to grab me in any way and was a struggle to finish.