Funeral in Berlin

Okay, I'm a huge fan of Deighton's. I'm predisposed to enjoy his intelligent mix of spy procedural plotting, the occasional apt aphorism and his descriptive metaphors setting the scene of each new location into which his man walks. But this was quite good in plot, definitely better than An Expensive Place to Die, the plot of which I never quite bought. It was curious to read this back after having first seen the movie. The makers of the three Harry Palmer films changed the plots significantly from those of all three books, so, if, like me, you thought the film of Funeral in Berlin was somewhat lackluster, don't be afraid to pick up the book. I'd say the same of Billion Dollar Brain. Only in The Ipcress File did they vary the plot from that of the book and tell as interesting a story in a different way.

This was the second Len Deighton I read and words escape me as to how I felt about it. The suspense started on the first page and carried through the entire book, with virtually no lapses in the storyline. The characters were extremely interesting and well developed...I could almost picture them as real people in post-war Berlin. I rank this book alongside "The Spy Who Came in From the Cold" and the Smiley trilogy, both by John LeCarre. I highly recommend this book to anyone that enjoys a good read.

I will read anything by Len Deighton and did so this past summer.7 books in all.This was one of the best and I am still thinking about it months later.His sense of style and turn of phrase includeds all the elements that make a fine writer.

An oldie but goldie in the cold war spy double double-crossing genre. This has an original 1964 publication date. It came after Spy Story. Some characters recurr in The Ipcress File where the proragonist (nameless in this) is called Palmer. The Spy Who Came in From the Cold had already been written (and we'd had Graham Greene). I remembered it for the ingenious plotting. Re-reading it I'm struck by the quality of the prose. Later Len Deightons don't contain such fancy writing. He loves describing the shabby and dingy: "I looked around at Grenade's office: the brown-stained wainscotting, the plaster walls discolored in patches near the ceiling and the old-fashioned metal radiators under which a rash of cream-colored pimples proclaimed the haste of a clumsy painter."

This was Deighton's second book, before he became vaguely hackish and joined the Ludlum/Forsythe "hefty Cold War thriller" gang. Here he has style to burn, definitely influenced by Chandler but not at all a pastiche or pale imitation. His sentences are crisp and always un-cliched; his attitude, as filtered through his nameless British protagonist, is cynical and put-upon and tough as a blackjack. You're more than welcome to picture Michael Caine embodying the anti-hero, as he did in the effective (though a bit uneven) film.