Len Deighton

I've never read a Len Deighton novel, but I've long been curious.

Berlin Game was the first book I bought this year, and shortly after, I managed to find a copy of Mexico Set. I had a little more trouble with London Match though and only chanced upon it today.



Now to find the time to read these, so I can decide if I like this author enough to pick up the other two Bernard Samson trilogies. Have any of you read these?

Those three (and some of his earlier stuff) were very good ... but it really seemed like he was trying too hard by the time he got to the next Samson books ... he should have quit when he was ahead.

Thanks for the response, KromesTomes.

Do you think I'd be left hanging if I just read these three and decide to no longer bother with the other two trilogies?

Or what if I just follow up these three books with Spy Hook and Spy Line? I ask because of this interesting comment:

I was done with the end of Spy Line, which I think concludes an awesome five-book story. I can't get into the reversal of Fiona's role in the story, or the re-write of Bernard that's necessary to swallow this one. It's like reading an SIS-propaganda rewrite of the original story.

Any thoughts and opinions on seeing the Bernard Samson novels as "an awesome five-book story" that sadly went off the rails as the author wrote more and more novels?

Eldritch, no not really. To me, these are more a Le Carre sort of thing, so not really your cliffhanger must know happens next books at all.

Same situation, first three for me, not any more.

Thanks, bluetyson! Despite how I SOMETIMES like a gripping cliffhanger-type of reading experience, I much prefer a series of books that's a bit more..."loose." Le Carre's Quest for Karla is a perfect example of what I'm looking for.

I can't wait to finally get some Deighton into my system by reading this, which I'll do after I finish reading this year's choice for Hallowe'en novel.

Yeah, definitely more like the Karla stuff, from my recollection.

"When I get all my questions answered fully, I know I'm asking the wrong questions."

Nice! More than halfway through Berlin Game, and I'm really enjoying it!

I'm still uncertain whether or not I'll hunt down the other Bernard Samson novels, but I think I'm inclined to do so.

How do these books compare with the ones featuring the spy known in the films as Harry Palmer? Do those have to be read in order, starting with The IPCRESS File?

What about the stand-alone novel City of Gold? I really prefer Cold War settings for spy fiction, but I wouldn't mind going back to WW2 if that one's good.

I'm a hundred pages into Mexico Set, and I'm pleasantly surprised to find myself enjoying it even more than I did Berlin Game.

The surprise has to do with how I was rather skeptical of Mexico as a setting for the second novel. Nothing against Mexico, mind, but a Cold War novel set mostly in Berlin seems more typical.

Still, I enjoyed the Mexico scenes, even if the characters (possibly the author?) seemed to dislike the country (and its food!) a great deal. I, for one, found parallels in the depiction of Mexico with life here in the Philippines. I love the food, too.

More to the point, Mexico Set seems to contain smoother prose--not that Berlin Game didn't--that's often funny without losing the grim and gray of Deighton's world.

I also realize that another thing I like about both novels is how much I learn from them; in the case of the second novel, the difference between defection and enrollment, for instance, which has me curious as to whether the latter term is something that's actually used in real life.

There's a bit in Berlin Game that I stumbled on. It's not really important to the plot, but it stood out because I didn't hear any mention of it before and after the paragraph.

I hope no one considers this a major spoiler for that reason, but I was surprised and started wondering how and when it happened when Bernard Samson suddenly mentions Dicky Cruyer having an affair with Tessa.

I haven't read Len Deighton for years but I am pleasantly surprised about two-thirds into Spy Hook. Above average for UK spy fiction. I have Funeral in Berlin to try next unless I can get copy of Spy Line before;-)

I am pleasantly surprised about two-thirds into Spy Hook

That's great to hear! I have that and Spy Line waiting to be read. I still haven't bought Spy Sinker though, a small part of which is because of the comment I quoted above in Message 3.

Above average for UK spy fiction.

I rather like UK spy fiction, actually. I'm not absolutely sure why, but I seem to detect some kind of reason lurking in the fog of my brain.

Has anyone heard rumours of a new Bernard Samson trilogy - Winken, Blinken and Nod?
Saw a post with this potential beginning to Winken:--------------------------
“I suppose you’re wondering why I called this meeting” I said. Werner snorted. For what seemed the hundredth time, maybe it was two hundredth, we were sitting in a car at night waiting.
“Can’t you think of any new lines?” Werner huffed. He was out of sorts. Zena, his beautiful, but unmanageable wife was off somewhere again. The only good news this time was that he knew she wasn’t with Frank Harrington. The former Berlin Resident was long retired and now in Australia. He was supposedly helping his son out with some charter plane company. But if I knew Frank, there were other Australian distractions that were likely getting a lot of his attention.
“You must have people who could handle this” Werner protested again. I knew he didn’t mean it. Werner loved this spy stuff. “The Berlin Resident should not be sitting in a car in the middle of the night waiting for goodness knows who to show.”
“It isn’t ‘goodness knows who.’ You know who it is and why it’s me who has to be here.”
Much had changed in the job since the wall came down. Much had not. Werner was right of course. We were both too old to be out in the field.

My favourite Deighton book is SS-GB: OCCUPIED BRITAIN 1941, published 1978. It's an alternate history which asks what if the Nazi invasion of Britain had been successful. I also think that BOMBER is a very well conceived and written book: it's a pseudo-documentary detailing a raid made by a British bomber crew on a German town, cutting back and forth between the two settings, developing character and action as it goes. It was first published in 1970

grantsoo, where did you hear about that? And where did you get that excerpt?

mcoy, SS-GB is actually the first Deighton book I bought, but I can no longer find that copy unfortunately. As for Bomber, I've seen that around here and there but have yet to pick it up.

Maybe after I read Spy Hook and Spy Line (and decided whether or not to read Spy Sinker.

I find that Deighton books are rather a glut on the used book market at the moment. I recently took eight Deighton titles to a shop and they would only buy three of them--just too many copies floating around. This may be a sign that the books are so good that they sold in great quantities, or, more likely, that the stories have become dated and people are unloading them from their libraries.

A big factor is that Deighton, like a number of his contemporaries, appealed largely to men of comparable age - `the National Service generation` (for US LTers, National Service was a post-war UK thing where school leavers did a couple of years military service before going into the world of work). That generation is obviously becoming depleted, plus I presume at this stage in thir lives, if they want the books, they have them. The other point is that many booksellers have experience of happily buying books by Deighton etc thinking them a dependable seller, then finding they`re stuck with them, which tends to work as `aversion therapy`. The other point is that Deighton et al were heavily featured in the Companions Book Club etc, which I suspect came off the presses in huge quantities.

Also, I`m told the end of the Cold War triggered a downturn in demand for spy fiction generally.

Deighton's books do indeed seem like a staple in used book shops these days. I do have to say, however, that they seem to disappear just when I start trying to hunt down specific titles!

I know mcoy isn't really saying that the novels have become dated (or are you?), but I've seen so many comments, viz., Amazon.Com customer reviews, that use that as a justification for saying that those books are no longer worth reading.

I've always been bothered by that, since I like those novels precisely because they now work as time capsules of that era. At the same time, authors like Deighton and Le Carre write with a prose style that stands the test of time as good fiction: though obviously a matter of taste, I'm willing to defend that!

nickhoonaloon's comments are likewise thought-provoking, but what's the Companions Book Club?

Also, while the end of the Cold War (and the increasing prominence of media coverage of terrorism) did effect some changes in the genre, I still prefer those novels set in that nearly-half-a-century when superpowers fought in silence and secrecy. Again, that's a matter of taste though, as you can see from some of the recent publications I've been interested in lately.

Incidentally, Quentin Tarantino is interested in adapting Game Set and Match for the big screen.

I'm no longer that big a fan of Tarantino, but even if I try to think back to how I used to enjoy his films, this is certainly one of the oddest director-film ideas I've ever heard. (Kinda like Doug Liman doing The Bourne Identity? *laughs*)

I wish the television adaptation of Deighton's trilogy starring Ian Holm would be released on DVD, but hearsay has it that the author wasn't really pleased with how that turned out...

I agree with nickhoonaloon that the general age of the Deighton readership may be a factor in the seeiming decline of his popularity. And I guess that I didn't really mean to say that his work was "dated" except in the sense that they now qualify as "period novels" almost. Yet they are not sufficiently "period" perhaps to engage those people who are fans of Alan Furst or Robert Janes. So I apologise to eldritch00 who is, like me a fan of Deighton. I do have to say, though, that I think the two "trilogy" series of books, including Game Set and Match, are looser and not so well written as previous work.

Oh, no need to apologize, mcoy. I did assume that what you meant was what you just said here. You've also in fact tapped into the appeal these books have for me--"as 'period novels' almost."

Anyway, having enjoyed Game Set and Match so much, I have a feeling I'm going to enjoy the earlier work even more, if our tastes match on this one.

Somewhat belatedly, I don`t really know much about Companion Book Club, other than it`s name. As far as I know, it existed in the `60s and published a range of titles that had previously seen the light of day through `normal` publishers. They reprinted numerous titles from Deighton and others, with rather good `period` dust jackets. I presume it was run on a membership basis.

This may be just an assumption, but I suspect it`s readership were working class males, probably enriched by the then-buoyant manufacturing sector and with more leisure time and possibly better education than their fathers. As I said, almost certainly members of the National Service generation.

I've just finished watching the 6th episode of the Game, Set and Match BBC miniseries. Now that I have characters in mind, I plan on reading the books again. I've already been through the 3 trilogies twice, but Bernard's sarcasm is timeless.

I feel I'm the "odd man out" in that I felt that the nonology held together remarkably well - a useful exploration of human condition stuff as much as espionage stuff. Even Winter properly belongs as part of the set. The approach of having bits of the tale told by different people is hardly new, but presenting his characters as flawed and considerably less than omniscient was a great feature of many of his novels - a return to the two versions of the death of Newbegin in Billion Dollar Brain, for example.
Oh yeah, someone mentioned City of Gold - a great novel, pretty well based on reality, and left me cross that Deighton didn't write more on Samson senior, and other WW2 espionage. He wrote a nice non-fiction article on the identity of Lucy, preceeding some books that have since been published.
So I recommend taking the time to read all the nonology, perhaps inserting Winter after the first 3 for a frame of reference.
But the very best is Spy Story - cynical, witty, intelligent, some action. This novel must have about 15 of my favourite Deighton quotes.

I just finished the Game, Set and Match BBC video series. It was very good even though I thought they could have done a better job in casting. Ian Holmes played Bernard. Being a Samson fan, I would recommend it. I agree about Spy Story. I found it a little hard to follow but the wit was great. Many, many of the witty lines I now try I got from Bernard.

Thanks for the newer responses, folks. The comments about Spy Story are making me want to hunt that down next. Should I still go for it even if I can't find the other novels featuring the same main character?

Hey I'm probably the wrong person to comment. Len Deighton has written only one bad book in my less than humble opinion, and that was Close Up. His early stuff was great, saw me through the dark hours of divorce mark 1, encouraged me to learn how to cook - his Ou est le Garlic? is enormously under-rated - how to cook darned good food in minimal circumstances and impress someone with the results - and his late stuff was also a parallel with my mundane version of mid-life crisis etc.
So yeah, sure, read the Bernard Samson stuff, but have a go at some of the early stuff too, such as Spy Story and Funeral in Berlin and Billion dollar brain. The last is a fine novel, with almost nothing in common with the plot of the over-the-top film. For plot, I like Horse underwater as the best of the early things, but the other early novels are obviously leading up to the wit etc, of Spy Story, which I read about every 4 years to remind myself just how good it is.

I still have not seen any more information on the fourth trilogy Winken, Blinken and Nod.
One comment though, after reading Faith again, I could not picture Ian Holm beating to a pulp the truck driver who tried to kill Bernard. Just didn't fit.

Just beginning to read Faith. similar to poster msg 25, deighton is getting me through a trying period. Read everything from Spy Game to Spy Sinker since August. Find myself wondering how some nasty stuff in Spy Sinker is going to be resolved, or will it? Glad I didn't catch the BBC series --Holm doesn't match my perception of B. Samson.

To fwendy: You will have to wait for Charity for it all (well, almost all) to come together. It helps, but is not really satisfying. It looks like Deighton forced some things just to give closure. I would have liked even a short epilogue to tie up the remaining loose ends.

Does anyone have any favourite Bernard Samson lines?
I have many, but one that I think just sums up his life so well is from Faith, when he is meeting with Uncle Silas at Fiona's father's place.
'He stared at me for what seemed like ages. "Don't be a bloody fool Bernard. You've got a fine wife. You should be down on your hands and knees to her."
"I am, all the time," I said. "But I keep splitting the a_se out of my trousers."'

That was a good one, grantsoo. I fly through these books so quickly I don't take enough time to savor Bernard's wit. Going to begin Hope tonight, so maybe will note another.

Thanks for the heads-up regarding closure. The lack of it in Faith was disappointing, especially since The Tessa situation has only become muddier than ever.

Just finished Hope. Satisfying that some serious issues finally addressed: Tessa somewhat resolved, Fiona's vulnerability, the fellow that managed the slush fund (can't recall name) still linked, and Werner's role. I like the way Deighton presumed readers' knowledge of characters without reviewing relationships for 1st-time readers. Will obtain Charity next week, so will sadly end Bernard's tale soon. Bernard's sarcasm entertaining, but no remarkable lines from Hope. Maybe when he talks to Uncle Silas again . . .

I've enjoyed all the Bernard Samson books, even though I was disappointed with the final book that supposedly explained everything at the end. Deighton can do some great plot twists, though.

Hi Grantsoo, I also heard a rumour, tell me where you found it or what you heard, I just read all three triologies in a week, I'm addicted!! Any pointers would be greatly appreciated. Tahnks

Hi Grantsoo, I also heard a rumour, tell me where you found it or what you heard, I just read all three triologies in a week, I'm addicted!! Any pointers would be greatly appreciated. Thanks.

Does anyone have any favourite Bernard Samson lines?
I have many, but one that I think just sums up his life so well is from Faith, when he is meeting with Uncle Silas at Fiona's father's place.
'He stared at me for what seemed like ages. "Don't be a bloody fool Bernard. You've got a fine wife. You should be down on your hands and knees to her."
"I am, all the time," I said. "But I keep splitting the a_se out of my trousers."'

To answer the questions, I have not heard any more about the rumour of a new trilogy, though I sure would love one.

A trilogy that is, not a rumour.

Are there any Deighton fans still alive? Besides me.

I guess we can kiss goodbye any hopes of another book....