London Match

It's one of those hall-of-mirrors British spy stories in which the puzzle is to figure out who is working for whom, and who is double-crossing whom. I was rereading my Len Deightons, partly to see how much impact they still have post-cold war, and I picked this one up out of order. After the first few pages I remembered that this was third in the Bernard Samson series, set in the 1970's and 80's, but it has close affinities to the Harry Palmer series of the 60's, especially Funeral in Berlin. (This has a 1985 publication date). If you're completely new to Len Deighton I'd start with those, and of course you should read Berlin Game and Mexico Set before this. Some people think Deighton deteriorated in the later spy books. They contain fewer wisecracks and less descriptive scene- setting. In compensation there's a lot of subtle humor in the portrayal of the Dilbert-like atmosphere of office politics, and the plots are more sharply focussed and draw naturally to a climax. The earlier books tend to jump from episode to episode with a tidying up of plot in the last chapter.

Bernard finaly confronts his betrayer over the fate of their children and the consequences of it show that the story of Bernard and Fiona Sampson is far from over. Don't read this unless you have read the two previous novels.

The grand-finale for the game-set-match trilogy. If you've read them all, try to read WINTER to see how it all started!

London Match by Len Deighton is a book about Benard Sampson, a spy working for London Central and his encounters and challenges as a spy living in the time of the Berlin Wall. It offered such a frightening outlook on the KGB and other secret services in Europe and Russia. I found myself being lost in the intensity and I found that I could not put the book down. There are so many suprising twists and turns that the reader is constantly surprised. After reading all of the other books in the trilagy, I had gotton to now Sampson very well. This book is very intriguing and is well written. London Match is ranked very high on my list of favorite books, along with all of his others novels.

The best of the game, set and match trilogy. Exciting, lean and suspenseful. Worth a read, this!