Len Deighton: Violent Ward (1993)

Edition: HarperCollins, 1994
Review number: 1289

One of Robert Heinlein's best known short stories, ...And He Built A Crooked House, begins with a whimsical description of the lunacy of America. This novel, with its tagline "If America is a lunatic asylum then California is the Violent Ward", brings that idea up to date, with a much bleaker view of Lost Angeles set during the Rodney King trial: the amiable eccentricity of Heinlein's early fifties suburbia is long gone.

Mickey Murphy is a shady lawyer, whose clients, though they include a well known film actor, tend to be on the edges of the underworld. He reluctantly becomes involved in something rather more serious than shady dealing, and this comes to a head against the background of increasing tension on the streets - a nice use of the "pathetic fallacy".

Deighton is a vintage writer covering familiar ground - the cynical, tough narrator involved in something he doesn't approve of, who knows a lot more about what is going on than he reveals to the reader is found in many of his novels. Given the LA setting, Violent Ward sometimes reads as though it could be the backstory of an ambiguous character who later turns up in one of Michael Connelly's Harry Bosch novels. A similar background, more or less centred on the film industry, has appeared before in Deighton's work, in XPD and Close-Up, but this is a more straightforward novel than either. It is more successful than XPD in particular because it leaves out the various elements that combine to make that novel one of Deighton's least believable. On balance, Violent Ward joins City of Gold to be Deighton's best work of the nineties, a more fitting end to his career than the comparatively lacklustre final Bernard Samson trilogy.

Len Deighton: City of Gold (1992)

Edition: Arrow, 1993
Review number: 1287

Len Deighton is almost as famous for his meticulously researched World War II stories (and non-fiction) as he is for his Cold War spy thrillers. City of Gold is his farewell to this sub-genre, and I think it is the best of his late novels. Like several others of his Second World War stories, it is inspired by actual events; set in Cairo during the North African campaign, it tells of the hunt for a spy who was revealing all the details of the Allied plans to Rommel, thus enabling him to win victory after victory and make the capture of Cairo seem only a matter of time. The investigation is given a twist because the reader knows that investigator Major Cutler is not really who he appears to be; he suffered a fatal heart attack escorting a prisoner to Cairo, and the prisoner, who was an actor before being conscripted, is now pretending to be the major. So as well as having to make an investigation he is not trained for, he is constantly worried about the possibility of discovery.

This twist adds an extra touch of humanity to the story, which otherwise could easily have been dry for a thriller. As you might expect, Cairo is expertly realised (it is as convincing as the setting in Olivia Manning's Levant trilogy, set in the same place at the same time and written by one who was there), and the background details show the research to have been thorough. Cairo, the city of gold, is a corrupt place in the period, and now it is a frightened one, and so the novel is filled with examples of the sordid side of human nature; Deighton keeps this entertaining rather than depressing.

City of Gold is the best of Deighton's nineties novels, the only one to really score near his classics of earlier decades. Thirty years on from The Ipcress File, Deighton was probably not really thinking about gaining new fans and there is little that is new here; but it is far more successful than MAMista, the only one of his late novels which could be described as innovative.

I can heartily recommend City of Gold to anyone who enjoys war stories; it also makes it clear that Alan Furst has turned out to be Deighton's natural successor in this field.

Len Deighton: MAMista (1991)

Edition: Arrow, 1992
Review number: 1285


Written in between Bernard Samson novels, MAMista is Len Deighton's first attempt to find a new subject for his fiction, following the end of the Cold War in Europe. MAMista ends up being one of Deighton's most radically non-typical novels, most like Close-Up from the rest of his output in lots of ways - and that too was a novel written at a time when he was searching for a way forward as a writer. Another novel which is even more similar, though not by Deighton, is John le Carré's The Little Drummer Girl.

The subject of MAMista seems exceptionally up to date now, rather more so than it did at the time. It is about a terrorist group (or freedom fighters, as they would term themselves) in a poor country in South America where the main economic activity is the cultivation of coca leaves. Three outsiders become either MAMista members or effectively hostages, and the backbone of the story is the description of a terrible trek through the jungle after a raid. At the time, it felt as though Che Guevara was three decades behind the times, but now terrorism is back at the centre of our consciousness, even if not in South America.

The most important thing to say about MAMista is that it is not really a thriller, but a tragedy. There is no hope of a happy ending for anyone but the members of the oppressive regime in this novel, which makes it definitely Deighton's most downbeat. The connection with Close-Up lies mainly in not being in the thriller genre, but the parallels with The Little Drummer Girl are in the storyline, as both plots are about terrorists and hostages. So Deighton's first response to the end of the Cold War was to move out of the thriller genre almost completely, to write a mainstream novel with some of the trappings of a thriller.

It has to be said that MAMista is not one of Deighton's best novels, though it grows on one on repeated reading. None of the characters are particularly engaging, and the tone of the narrative is relentlessly cheerless, lacking the cynical humour usually characteristic of the author. This means that it doesn't hold the attention as this sort of project really should, particularly as the storyline lacks the urgency and forward motion of a thriller (and this slowness is presumably intended, as it mirrors the confusion and pointlessness of the guerilla campaign).

Len Deighton: Charity (1996)

Edition: HarperCollins, 1997
Review number: 1283

This is the concluding novel not just of the long running Bernard Samson saga but of Len Deighton's fiction as a whole. It brings to a close a series of attempts to deal with the ending of the Cold War - an event with a big impact for an author of spy fiction: different settings tangential to the genre in MamISTA, City of Gold, and Violent Ward, and the story of the downfall of Communism itself in the last trilogy of Samson novels. I suspect that the difficulty Deighton experienced in finding a new theme appropriate to the times was a contributing factor to his stopping fiction writing when he did.

The reader's expectation with Charity is that it will wrap up the remaining loose ends, and leave Bernard and Fiona's future sorted out. Having read Spy Sinker, followers of the series know more about what really happened on the day of Fiona's return to West Berlin than Bernard does - so the big question is really how much does he find out, and how much pain does he bring on himself and those around him by his investigations?

Although Charity is set before the end of Soviet control over Eastern Europe, Deighton makes sure we know what happens after the end of the novel with little ironic reminders - such as describing a falling person as looking "like a toppling statue of a tyrant". The ending itself is rather abrupt; the last chapter comes with something of a jerk. It is really about new beginnings for the characters, starting relationships over again - entirely appropriate, given the huge changes about to impact their world.

Three series characters dominate British spy fiction: James Bond, George Smiley, and Bernard Samson. They are all quite different from each other, even if you could argue that Bernard is very similar to Deighton's earlier Harry Palmer character and something of a mix of the other two. Smiley is all subtle intellectual; James Bond is all brute force action. Bernard does both parts, and this makes him both more exciting to read about than Le Carré's character and more interesting and certainly less unpleasant than Ian Fleming's. More is revealed about Bernard's inner character than about either Smiley or Bond, even though his narration (and neither Smiley or Bond is every allowed the luxury of telling their own story) is written in such a way that it is clear that Bernard is hiding quite a lot. This of course makes him more believable as a character, as does the way that his powers as an intellectual spy master and an action hero are both carefully limited by Deighton, presumably to this end. The series (ten novels in all, including a prequel not involving Bernard personally) is a substantial body of work, intimately connected to the fall of Communist East Germany and thus a major fictionalisation of some of the most important historical events of the last half century.

Len Deighton: Hope (1995)

Edition: HarperCollins, 1995
Review number: 1279

The Bernard Samson story continues, as the waves thrown up by his brother in law George Kosinski's attempts to investigate the death of his wife (Bernard's wife's sister) continue to threaten to reveal all kinds of unwelcome facts about the actions of British Intelligence in the closing months of the Cold War. (Tessa Kosinski had been killed during her sister's escape from East Germany where she had been working undercover - a British agent who was a senior official in the Stasi secret police.) Now George has himself disappeared, apparently either escaping from or kidnapped by Stasi agents. Bernard undertakes a mission to George's family home, a big house in a remote part of Poland, protected from appropriation by the Communists by a series of compromises made with the regime over the years.

While it is clear when thinking about it dispassionately that the whole of the Bernard Samson series is to say the least unlikely, this is the first of the novels where the improbabilities mount up to the point where the reader takes notice before reaching the end. There is a feeling that Deighton has by this point rather run out of steam, that the third re-interpretation of the story behind Fiona Samson's apparent defection has just too little material to work on. The third trilogy was written rather longer after the events it describes than the earlier novels - Hope is set in 1987, but not published until 1995 - and so lacks the immediacy that they had. (This is apparent even reading them years later - Deighton obviously got fired up about describing the Cold War as it happened.) This also means of course that most readers will know what happens next: the rapid collapse of the Soviet bloc at the end of the eighties hangs over this third trilogy (I suspect it was written because Deighton felt that the reactions of a veteran intelligence officer familiar with Berlin to the demolition of the Wall would make interesting reading). Hope is the poorest novel in the whole sequence and what I have said about several of the others applies with more force here: start at the beginning with Berlin Game and you will want to read the whole Bernard Samson story; do not start in the middle or near the end.

Len Deighton: Faith (1994)

Edition: HarperCollins, 1995
Review number: 1277

The third and final trilogy about Bernard Samson follos more or less straight on from the concluding moments of the preceding novels, skipping over only the months of recovery and debriefing on a remote Californian ranch that follow the escape of Bernard's wife Fiona from East Berlin where she has been a highly placed agent of the British Secret Service. (The setting is still in the days before the demolishing of the Wall.) The confusion left to be sorted out is immense - Bernard, for example, had been living with another woman, believing that Fiona was a defecting traitor; Fiona's sister Tess has apparently been killed in the fight on the autobahn linking Berlin to the West that was organised to cover Fiona's escape; rumours are flying round the Secret Service and no one has any idea what Fiona's role will be when and if she returns to work. Deighton left few loose ends at the end of London Match, the final novel in the first trilogy, but little is resolved in Spy Sinker, by contrast - it is much more obvious that the story would have to continue.

There are really two strands to Faith, one of which initially doesn't seem to be connected to the main narrative. This is a mission that Bernard is sent on to East Germany, to make contact with an officer who has secrets to sell to the West. The other is a private investigation into what happened on the night of the fight and to Tessa's body launched by her husband; this is clearly going to make waves by attempting to uncover secrets that others will want to keep hidden.

While the story naturally grows out of what has gone before, there are some changes of emphasis. We are back here with Bernard as a narrator, which works better than the third person used in Spy Sinker. More oddly, there has been an important change in emphasis which has been made without comment. Earlier, the point of the fight was to make it look as though Fiona had been killed, so that the East Germans and Russians don't know that she was working against them all this time. But now she and Bernard are openly living in the Mayfair flat that belonged to Tessa, and she is starting a high profile job in the London office - surely not something that will be overlooked by the Russian and East German agents still in London, no matter how much their respective countries are sliding into the economic chaos that was the penultimate stage in the fall of Soviet Communism.

Faith is one of the more downbeat Deighton novels, even in a series which focuses on betrayal. It is low key because, like Mexico Set in the first trilogy, it is about picking up the pieces after a trauma and starting again.

Len Deighton: Spy Sinker (1990)

Edition: Grafton, 1991
Review number: 1272

The final volume of the second Bernard Samson trilogy is absolutely and massively different from the five novels that precede it and the three that come after. Instead of narration by Bernard, with himself as the central character, we now get a (supposedly) objective third person narrative, which takes the setting back again to 1978 contemporary with that of Berlin Game and focuses on his wife, Fiona. (I say supposedly, because occasionally the objective mask is dropped, and remarks like one commenting that Fiona's public school background ideally prepared her for life as a double agent in East Germany are made.)

This sounds like a good idea; all along we have Bernard's not completely hones description of how he began to suspect his wife was a traitor, but then gradually discovered, following her defection, that she might be one of the most daring British agents of the Cold War. His position is as the victim of betrayal in both scenarios (as the husband of the agent, his particular difficulty is that he was left out of the secret). He is also not the central figure in his own drama, though the reader will tend to forget this because of the power implicit in being the narrator of the story. So how different is the picture from the point of view of the betrayer? This is Fiona's story, and it is perhaps to say something about her character that Deighton narrates in the third person, rather than producing a first person story from her side of things - more passive, perhaps.

In practise, it doesn't work as well as it sounds as though it should. Retelling the same story from a new point of view can work very well, when the new central character has something new to being to the tale (as in The Unbearable Lightness of Being, for example). Here, however, most of what we read either repeats what Bernard has said or is something the reader probably guessed from reading his account. (For example, we don't need to be given an explicit account to know that there must have been a high level meeting at which it was decided to keep the operation secret from Bernard.)

Another problem is that Fiona Samson is not as interesting or as believable a character as her husband. Of course, a large number of Deighton's earlier novels have central characters very similar to Bernard, so he had lots of practise before creating him, while Fiona is his only attempt at a female viewpoint character (barring short stretches from Only When I Larf). He may have been aware that she was less successful, and that is perhaps the reason why a fair amount of Spy Sinker concerns other characters - which in turn is a good reason why Fiona isn't given a first person narration.

As I have said before, to read Berlin Game is almost certainly enough to inspire you to go on and read the rest of the series, and there is certainly some interest here with the gaps that are filled in. But Spy Sinker is definitely the poorest of the Bernard Samson novels.

Len Deighton: Spy Line (1989)

Edition: Grafton, 1990
Review number: 1269

The start of this novel, second in the Hook, Line and Sinker trilogy, marks the lowest point of the career of British spy Bernard Samson, at least during the period documented by Deighton. The first scene is set in a seedy nightclub, from which Bernard goes to the squat where he is living in one of the most sordid areas of Berlin, a derelict housing estate up against the Wall. Here he is hiding from his employers, who have a warrant out for his arrest on suspicion of treason - all part of the events following his wife's defection to the Communists. As it turns out, Bernard is safer on the run than when he returns to the department, to be immediately sent out on a poorly organised and dangerous mission to Austria.

Though this seems to be a typical mid-trilogy novel, just keeping the plot ticking over, it has a huge shock in store. It also contains the beginning of Deighton's response to the changes brought by glasnost. The thawing of the Cold War was obviously a momentous event in the life of anyone who made a living from it, whether the spies who are the characters in Deighton's novels or the writer himself. At the start, he is not too impressed; he has a Berliner tell Bernard a joke in the very first scene of Spy Line - the only difference glasnost has brought to the Wall is that the frontier guards now shoot with silenced guns.

Bernard portrays himself as at the mercy of the machinations of others throughout the entire series (though his self image is clearly not entirely accurate), and this is particularly true in Spy Line. This is presumably because he is not at all happy with his own role at this point in the saga; the time has come when the betrayals are his own and when he has to make a decision that will be hurtful to those close to him whatever he does.

As I have said before in discussing other Bernard Samson books, this is a series to read from the beginning; do not start here, but with Berlin Game.

Len Deighton: Spy Hook (1988)

Edition: Grafton, 1989
Review number: 1266

Three years after the events of London Match, and Bernard Samson returns, to begin narrating the second trilogy of novels about himself and his wife. With Fiona firmly established in the KGB hierarchy in Berlin after her defection, and his gradual return to being trusted in his own work for British Intelligence, and with his continuing affair with a much younger woman, everything seemed more or less settled at the end of that novel; but now something happens which beings to unravel all the loose ends that the reader thought had been tied up.

The novel begins this process in the first chapter, which takes place in Washington DC. One of the interesting things about the Game, Set and Match trilogy is the remarkably small part played by the American intelligence agencies, especialy considering the post-war relationship between the US and British governments. The few American characters are either connected to British intelligence in some way or (appear to be) freelance information gatherers. Now, though, the US begins to be involved (though the office of the opening chapter belongs to an Englishman, a former colleague of Bernard's who is a financial expert). Nevertheless, the real focus is still Berlin; everything in this series of novels revolves around the city that was the symbol of the Cold War.

Spy Hook is very much a character based thriller - as Deighton's novels often tend to be. There is no action "for the sake of it" in his novels, and this is more cerebral than most of them. Bernard still has an overwhelming desire to understand why his wife not only defected but abandoned him and the children. The question that the reader has to ask - if they have followed the series of novels so far - is whether the discrepancies he sees are really there, or alternatively that he's clutching at these tiny loose ends hoping that the whole tangle will fall apart. And, of course, this is only the first novel in a new trilogy, so we're not likely to find out anything other than how far Bernard is able to put other people's backs up.

Len Deighton: London Match (1985)

Edition: Grafton, 1986
Review number: 1263

The third novel in the Game, Set and Match trilogy continues the story of how Bernard Samson copes with the aftermath of his wife's defection to the Soviet Union, the event which provided the climax to Berlin Game. KGB officer Erich Stinnes has in his turn defected - the central action of Mexico Set. And now it appears, from what London's intelligence services learn from Stinnes and other agents, that there is another KGB agent in a senior position in the Secret Intelligence Service. This time the novel is not so much concerned with the identity of the traitor, as the first part of the trilogy had been, but with whether the person pinpointed by the allegations is guilty or not. It certainly quickly becomes in the personal interests of many of the characters to support and exaggerate the rumours going round - this is office politics on a large scale.

The importance of the city of Berlin to this trilogy is hard to exaggerate. As a symbol of the Cold War it is unsurpassed, and so this is frequently true of spy fiction of that era. The divided city with its crazy town planning that resulted from being split makes an atmospheric background for these tales of betrayal. Mexico Set and London Match may use the names of other locations from Bernard's story for their titles, but Berlin is more important in the novels than either of them. So it is fitting that the final scene of the whole trilogy takes place in Berlin (though enough loose ends are left that it must have seemed unlikely that this was the last novel featuring Bernard Samson even before the appearance of Spy Hook.

Berlin Game is the best of these three novels, and indeed of all nine stories featuring Samson as the central character. But no one who has read that novel will fail to want to read the others, and they are rewarding too; Deighton is one of the best of thriller writers even when not at the absolute peak of form.

Len Deighton: Mexico Set (1985)

Edition: Grafton, 1986 (Buy from Amazon)
Review number: 1261

I don't think it would be possible to write sensibly about the second novel in the Game, Set and Match trilogy without giving away an important part of the plot of Berlin Game, the first one. So I'm not even going to try. Mexico Set is all about how Bernard Samson copes when his wife defects to the Russians after he uncovers the fact that she is a KGB agent (they were both senior members of the British secret service). So the novel is about Bernard's personal and professional difficulties; he has to try to work out how much of their marriage was a sham, t otry and be there for his children (which he fails miserably to do) and to deflect the questioning of his own loyalty by his colleagues - surely, they say, he should have suspected Fiona long ago, if he himself was innocent.

The plot of Mexico Set is about Bernard trying to persuade a KGB officer - Stinnes, who appeared at the end of Berlin Game and who works for Fiona- to defect. Once again, the narrative is cleverly done so that it doesn't just given an impression of Bernard's feelings, but also conveys something of how much he isn't saying. (How has this man, who views himself as reasonable and professional, come to be so feared by his colleagues?) The various backgrounds, from the sleaze of Mexico City to the paranoia of Berlin, are atmospheric and tightly integrated into the feelings that the novel produces as it is read - treachery is just so much more plausible in the settings Deighton provides for it. Everything about the novel fits together efficiently, and is about enhancing its effectiveness.

Mexico Set is mainly concerned with Bernard's character, which makes it seem a little low key for a modern thriller. Although the reader has the impression that there is not a great deal of action, in fact there is a fair amount of violence, all of it the consequence of some betrayal - by Fiona, or the deskbound officials in London (both of Bernard), or of one Russian agent by another. Betrayal is of course the main theme of the whole trilogy, but Mexico Set is remarkable for the number of different acts of bad faith.

Anyone who reads Berlin Match is very likely to read on through the rest of the trilogy (and quite probably through the other seven novels relating to Bernard Samson); together, they form one of the premier classics of the thriller genre. I am not quite sure how well Mexico Set would work by itself, having only every read it immediately following its predecessor, but I would certainly advise prospective readers to start at the beginning with Berlin Game.

Len Deighton: Berlin Game (1983)

Edition: Grafton, 1984 (Buy from Amazon)
Review number: 1259

While no one who read The Ipcress File could deny that Len Deighton was one of the great spy fiction writers, several of his other novels seem quite tired. With Berlin Game, and indeed the whole of the Game, Set and Match trilogy, everything came together once again; this story would no doubt join Deighton's debut in many fans' lists of the absolute top spy stories. It is not surprising that Bernard Samson dominated the rest of Deighton's output in the same way that Harry Palmer did in the sixties.

From a plotting point of view, there are a lot of points of similarity between the two novels. Both are supreme examples of the "which of my colleagues is a traitor" storyline, and both are told by a world weary, cynical narrator. Both are set mainly in London, but with a second focus elsewhere - in each case, somewhere crucial to the unravelling of the treachery: Berlin here (obviously) and an American nuclear testing facility in The Ipcress File; the London scenes are mainly about office politics. Like Palmer, Samson doesn't quite fit in; twenty years after The Ipcress File, the secret service is still full of Oxbridge types who look down on someone who never went to university at all; both narrators have a serious chip on their shoulder about this, and the attitude is something of a constant theme in Deighton's writing about the secret service as part of the British establishment.

The main difference between the two narrators is in the situations of the narrators in the two novels. Bernard Samson is considerably older, and he is married (to another senior official from "the Department") with two youngish children. Harry Palmer's career began during the Second World War, Bernard grew up in post-war Berlin. These two changes make considerable difference; Bernard is willing to attribute more complex motives to those around him, and recognises shades of grey in treachery which would never occur to Harry. Bernard is so world weary that each betrayal just adds its bit to the total sadness in the world; there is nothing to be surprised about, no real blame to award, for treachery is only to be expected. And yet, even so, those around him describe Bernard as an optimist.

So Bernard Samson is an older, more settled character, and that affects every aspect of Berlin Game, from the amount of action to his analysis of motivations. Even without many of the traditional thrills of the genre, the novel keeps the reader enthralled from beginning to end. It is the characterisation of the narrator which does this - Deighton is subtle enough that we don't just get Bernard Samson as described by himself, but are able to see through that to a real character underneath. The Ipcress File might be more original (Berlin Game being very much derived from it), and it might have had more influence on other writers; but in Berlin Game Deighton has created not just another classic thriller, but one which is in my opinion better than its model.

Len Deighton: Winter (1987)

Edition: Grafton, 1988 (Buy from Amazon)
Review number: 1255

After the phenomenal success of the first trilogy of Bernard Samson novels, Deighton wrote Winter as a sort of prequel. "Sort of" because it doesn't actually involve many of the characters from the trilogy - being mainly about their parents and grand parents during the first half of the twentieth century - and has a very different focus - it is really about the rise of Hitler. This is Deighton's attempt to explain just why so many Germans came to support the Nazis.

The plot is more a family saga than a thriller; two brothers, who grow up close but are divided later when one is caught up by the Nazi bandwagon while the other marries a Jew and plays the piano for Brecht and Weill. While Deighton really has nothing new to say about the early days of National Socialism, which must be one of the most closely studied parts of twentieth century political history, the story of the Winter brothers illuminates the history and makes it personal; they are exactly the sort of well drawn, well placed fictional characters which are a part of many good historical novels. And that is really what Winter is - an excellent historical novel, not a thriller. It's closest companion in Deighton's work is the alternative history SS-GB, but it is also like his Second World War novels Bomber and Goodbye Mickey Mouse in that its purpose is to put well realised imaginary characters in immaculately researched historical settings. Of all these four novels, Winter is the most successful, the Winter brothers being two of the best written characters in all of Deighton's output. Winter is by a large margin Deighton's longest novel, but it is definitely worth the read.

Len Deighton: Goodbye Mickey Mouse (1982)

Edition: Book Club Associates, 1983 (Buy from Amazon)
Review number: 1251

It seems obvious to compare this novel set in an American fighter unit stationed on a Norfolk airfield in the Second World War with Deighton's earlier Bomber. But although the setting is similar, there are many differences between the novels, at several levels. The tensions between the Americans and the locals - the pilots trying hard to live up to the "overpaid, oversexed and over here" cliché - bring a different atmosphere to the story, as does an unusual interest in public relations, not an aspect of the war effort which gets much attention. (And it resonates - spinning war stories for a media circus is not new to wars fought in the eighties and nineties, by any means.)

Bomber reads as though it's a book based on a documentary, because of its twenty-four hour timespan and the careful research into the background details. While Goodbye Mickey Mouse is obviously as well researched, it doesn't feel like a documentary, because the action is spread over several months, the research is presented less obtrusively, and it has a more complex plot which leads up to a veterans' reunion thirty years later. Deighton has also ditched the German characters which are important in Bomber and drastically reduced the descriptions of flying; Goodbye Mickey Mouse is a far better novel as a result.

Comparisons with Bomber proving something of a red herring, it is actually quite hard to find novels which are much like Goodbye Mickey Mouse. It is mainly the theme of the relationships between the Americans and the local British civilians - not quite conquerors and vanquished, but it must have sometimes felt like it - that is so unusual. A British writer almost exclusively using American points of view is also not common.

Goodbye Mickey Mouse - the title relates to the name given to one of the planes and a discussion about whether a phrase like "goodbye" in a name is unlucky - is not really a thriller, centring as it does on relationships not action. That is, of course, Deighton's intention, but it would not make the novel appeal to fans of, say, his early novels. For the general reader, Goodbye Mickey Mouse is also not perhaps Deighton's most immediately appealing writing, though it would repay the effort required to read it.

Len Deighton: XPD (1981)

Edition: Hutchinson & Co, 1981
Review number: 1249

The second of an (otherwise unrelated) trio of Deighton novels concerned with the Second World War, XPD is actually set in 1979, contemporary with its writing. It is close as Deighton has got to the idea driven thrillers of Frederick Forsyth, and has many similarities to The Odessa File, published almost a decade earlier. It deals with a plot by a group of former SS officers to sieze power in Germany. Their plans are based around the publication of some Third Reich documents about a secret meeting between Hitler and Churchill in June 1940, in which Churchill offered a British ceasefire on terms that would destroy his reputation, if known. These papers ended up with a huge consignment of looted gold in a salt mine, and the American soldiers charged with removing it at the end of the war proved to be less than totally honest. They managed to steal enough gold to set up their own private Swiss bank - and they picked up the documents at the same time.

The story becomes exceptionally complicated, and in the end is not among Deighton's most plausible plots, even if the original idea was obviously sparked by thoughts about oddities in published details of Churchill's itinerary in June 1940. (We see the central character of XPD carrying out what must be the same research in the middle of the novel.) The SS officers' plot is bizarrely backed by the KGB, something which might have made more sense in the late seventies than it does now, and I found it hard to see how the documents, however scandalous, could cause the kind of chaos in West Germany that would have been needed for the coup. Indeed, it occurs to several of the characters to wonder who precisely would care enough if the meeting became public knowledge. (When one says "It would destroy the Tory party", that does seem to be the most likely consequence, and unpleasant though that may have seemed to Margaret Thatcher, the newly incoming prime minister at the time, I could hardly care less.)

The title comes from a subplot; there is clearly a leak exposing details of the British Secret Service investigation into the affair, and at one point the central character of the novel, heading the investigation, wonders if he has possibly been made the subject of an expedient demise order or XPD, which is basically an instruction to kill an agent who has become a liability. This becomes another part of the plot which doesn't quite work for me, as it seems to be a paranoid fantasy and remains unconnected to anything else in the novel for too long.

Comparing XPD and The Odessa File does reveal how much better Deighton is at characterisation than Forsyth. The background, whether flashbacks to the forties, the Hollywood film industry or the meeting rooms of Whitehall, is also extremely well done. Were it not for the clunkiness of the plot, this could have been one of Deighton's best novels.

Len Deighton: SS-GB (1979)

Edition: Triad Grafton, 1980
Review number: 1248

Because of Deighton's long history as a successful thriller writer before the appearance of SS-GB, it is packaged as a thriller; but in fact it is science fiction dealing with a classic theme of that genre, and would doubtless have been classified as such if it had been a first novel. For this is alternative history, set in a Britain occupied by the Third Reich after a successful 1941 German invasion. Central character Douglas Archer is a senior officer at Scotland Yard, now under the control of the SS. Like many in occupied England, he tries to carry on with his job - criminal investigation - without getting in the way of or thinking too hard about the German occupiers. Crime is, after all, still crime. However, he is gradually drawn into a Resistance plot, much against his better judgement.

The Second World War is a conflict which, because of the hateful policies of the Nazis, has generated many myths, ideas which have become entrenched in popular culture and unquestionable, especially in Britain, no matter what their historical accuracy. These myths include the plucky but ineffective Home Guard, the dedicated airmen and so on - and one of the most powerful is the role of the Resistance in occupied countries. Everybody was apparently on the side of the Resistance, even if they were unable to do anything active, apart from a small number of moral degenerates, congenital traitors. A moment's thought would show that this could not have been the case, particularly given the exceptionally vicious fighting between rival Resistance groups in countries like Greece and Yugoslavia, but it would be hard to write a novel as cynical as Deighton's about a country that had actually been occupied without causing offence. In SS-GB, most people collaborate to some extent or another; many even welcome the Germans for all kinds of reasons; the Germans are far more attractive characters than a lot of the Resistance members.

Another reason for writing this kind of novel is the ability it gives the author to make oblique criticisms. About three quarters of the way through, in a conversation about German brutality, one character says "I wonder if we'd be as bad as they are, if we'd won the war and were occupying Germany". You don't hear much about brutality from the British and American troops occupying West Germany after the war, but it is certainly a comment with an uncomfortable resonance these days in which we hear all the time about abuse of Iraqi prisoners by American soldiers. It rubs against another Second World War myth, that the Germans were all brutal bullies and the Allies honourable young men.

SS-GB is a fascinating novel, extremely convincing (being based, of course, on Deighton's exhaustive knowledge of the period).

Len Deighton: Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Spy (1976)

Edition: Book Club Associates, 1977
Review number: 1245

At the start of this novel, the main characters (Major Mann of the CIA and the narrator, a British agent) pick up a Soviet defector in the middle of the Sahara Desert. This is an unusual start for a spy novel, where it would be more common for the plot to work up to the retrieval of the defector. But here the point of the novel is the investigation of some leaks of US research to the Russians, and it is this which makes Professor Bekuv valuable, as he was one of the beneficiaries before becoming disenchanted with the system and receiving a punishment appointment as a scientific advisor in Mali.

The title is an acknowledgement that this style of spy story was becoming old fashioned (even though Deighton continued writing them for another twenty years); it is the riposte given by the narrator to Major Mann's observation that in a few years the sky will be full of spy satellites, with the implication that this will render the old style of espionage obsolete. Even a quarter of a century later, though, I have never read a thriller which has a satellite as a major character; today's fictional spies may make far more use of computers and electronic surveillance, but they are still human.

Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Spy is not ashamed to be old fashioned - in fact it revels in it. It's exciting all the way, right up to the ending when the scene returns to the Sahara. Len Deighton's plots are usually quite complicated; Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Spy is a more straightforward thriller than most of his novels. Even so, it is excellently done, far better written than most of the genre. This is the Len Deighton to read if you are a fan of, say, Colin Forbes or Helen MacInnes, for those who think his other novels are too convoluted. To me, being someone who really enjoys working through the complexities, the novel is lacking something, entertaining though it is.

Len Deighton: Yesterday's Spy (1975)

Edition: Warner, 1976
Review number: 1243

The plots of a fair proportion of the novels Deighton has set contemporary to the date of writing involve something left over from the Second World War. There is an obvious reason why this happens, other than that the Cold War itself could be viewed as arising from the Second World War; many of the spies and spy masters of the seventies were still people who had had their greatest successes at that time. Deighton also does this kind of plot superbly; it lends itself to the kind of questioning cynicism which is the trademark of his novels. (The particular question which lies in the background of Yesterday's Spy is: are those who fought side by side thirty years earlier still comrades in arms?)

Steve Champion was a wartime hero, a British agent who organised a resistance cell in the south of France, though he was eventually captured and tortured by the Germans. After the war, he had made the most of his contacts to become a very rich, but decidedly shady businessman, used occasionally by British intelligence. But now he has some scheme of his own in mind, and growing closeness to the Egyptian government (more radical in the mid seventies than since) has made him a dangerous man to know.

The narrator was Champion's second in command during the war, and has continued to work for "the Department" ever since. So he seems the obvious person to use to infiltrate Champion's scheme, though he is not keen to do it and the fact that he is the obvious choice makes it harder for him to convince Champion of his sincerity. (And, once he has done so, to ensure that his employers still believe he is on their side.) Generally this is familiar Len Deighton territory; the narrator's character is little different from that of the narrator of Spy Story. (He actually has the same boss, though he doesn't seem to work in the same branch of intelligence at all.)

This familiarity is something of a problem with Yesterday's Spy. It is basically Deighton by numbers, more like the product of a good imitator than of Deighton himself - lacking in truly original inspiration. It has interesting ideas - the involvement of Champion's young son, part of a subplot in which the boy is kidnapped from his mother after a divorce, for example, but not enough is made from them.

Len Deighton: Spy Story (1974)

Edition: Triad, 1975
Review number: 1238

After a sequence of novels which are each in some way different from everything else he had written, Spy Story is Len Deighton's return to basics. It could almost be another sequel to The Ipcress File - it even shares several characters. (It is actually listed on Fantastic Fiction as one of the Harry Palmer novels, but the narrator is named, and isn't Palmer.)

Pat Armstrong, the narrator, works in wargaming, using the latest intelligence about Soviet military deployment with the help of what are now extremely primitive computers. When his car breaks down at night and he is unable to find a phone, he uses a key he still has to let himself into his old flat to make the call from there - only to find he has apparently continued to live there: and his family photos around the flat now show him with a slightly altered appearance. He is clearly at the centre of an elaborate plot of some kind, but the question is what, exactly?

This is by now familiar territory to readers of spy fiction - hence the throwaway title - but few writers have ever covered this ground as expertly as Deighton. The tone is bleaker than the earlier Harry Palmer novels, but then the optimistic sixties have long passed. There is still humour here, though; less of it and less obvious, but still present. For a thriller, there isn't a great deal of action and a lot of what there is happens off stage. Spy Story is more subtle than most spy thrillers; Deighton's interest isn't in staging stunts but in the relationships between agents of various types and the politics of the interactions between different agencies, British and American, which is perhaps a slight shift from his earlier writing in the genre. This is a chance to lie back and relish vintage Len Deighton, at a slightly slower pace.

Len Deighton: Close-Up (1972)

Edition: Pan, 1974
Review number: 1230

This is the last of Deighton's experiments outside the spy genre for a long time, and it is the only one of his novels which cannot be described as a thriller of one sort or another. Close-Up is a satirical portrait of the Hollywood film industry, based presumably on stories heard or impressions gained during the filming of many of Deighton's novels during the sixties. (I would hesitate to say, particularly given the clear disclaimer at the start of the novel, that the characters are based on any real individuals.)

Close-Up is the story of superstar Marshall Stone who, in the early seventies after twenty years a star is frightened - that his career is coming to an end, of the young up-and-coming actors who might take the roles he regards as his own. Then there is what the press think is a romance with young model turned actress Suzy Delft, though in a twist typical of the novel, she is in fact his daughter from an affair hushed up by the studios at the beginning of his career. The whole novel is about how different the reality of the film business is from the image fed to (and eagerly lapped up by) the media. Stone, for example, may be charming, but he is also an utterly self centred hypochondriac. His real name, Eddie Brummage, points to the difference between appearance and reality - "brummagem" was slang for shoddy mass produced goods.

The subtle aspect of the novel is the way in which the reader is given insights into why Stone is the way he is - how his insecurities made him a great screen actor, and how his success in turn feeds his psychological problems. This blunts the edge of the satire - the film The Player, for example, is much more vicious - but makes Close-Up more effective as a piece of fiction about characters who seem real.

Close-Up may not be the most immediately appealing Len Deighton novel, because it is so different from anything else he wrote. It is in this way similar to John le Carré's The Naive and Sentimental Lover, but is less ambitious and, partly as a result, much more successful. This is one of Deighton's best novels - it is just not a thriller.