10 of the Greatest Cold War Spy Novels
“The nameless secret agent here may lack the name ‘Harry Palmer,’ but he is very the much the deceptively ordinary bureaucrat-with-a-gun of the classic 1965 Michael Caine film. A womanizer and a gourmet cook, he has no great love for his superiors and secretly prepares an exit strategy, should things in the spy world go awry. In his assignment to locate missing scientists, he uncovers a secret brainwashing scheme that marks him for the next victim, due to betrayal from the ranks of the superiors he already distrusts. By any name, Deighton’s working-class spy is the ideal anti-Bond.”