26 Books

There are more spoilers below. Go and read the books first if you’re going to, I’ll ruin it for you otherwise.

Mexico Set (Panther Books)

Len Deighton
Harper 2010, Paperback, 416 pages, £7.99

Continuing from Berlin Match, Bernard Samson’s wife Fiona has defected, and Bernard himself is in Mexico, looking for the soviet agent Eric Stinnes, who had arrested and interrogated him in Berlin. Dicky Cruyer, senior to Samson, goes with him to build a little south American power base for himself.

Fiona has threatened to kidnap the children and Samson is quietly and determinedly making sure he keeps them with him. He concentrates on home and duty while the rest of the service works around him on influence.

The office politics are everywhere, above him in the top floor offices, below him in the windowless records rooms and in the attractive form of Gloria Kent, a pretty girl he’s managed to add to his office staff. She is ambitious and accommodating but becomes a test of what other people will do to improve their lot and how far he will abuse his own meagre position.

Samson’s friend and compatriot Werner Volkmann has his own pretty young test of character, but he fails his. His slightly ridiculous wife, Zena, is a too-young power player who provides the other end of the scale of people involved in espionage. At one end are the senior staff in London, lacking in knowledge but swimming in power. In the middle, there’s Bernard Samson, all knowledge but increasingly led around by events with fewer free choices to make as time goes on. Zena makes choices but is utterly lacking in knowledge, and has a far too great opinion of her own judgment, so can’t help but destroy herself in the end through poor decisions taken to further her own interests.

Stinnes makes it clear that he is willing, even eager to defect, but Samson suspects his motives just as his chief, Bret Rensselaer (a name I could never work out how to pronounce) is suspecting Samson’s back in London. He suspects that Samson is still working with Fiona and that Stinnes is their go-between, and that Samson is planning to defect rather than bring Stinnes back.

The uncertainty, duplicity and office politics result in Samson’s authority being questioned which, combined with Zena’s double dealing and the new second agent’s inexperience, almost break the deal.

In the end Samson is still left under suspicion but not with certain important characters, and a new player, the seemingly innocent and bumbling  director general, is introduced. Again, the complexities of personal and professional relatonships are far more involved than the relationships of professional espionage, and danger is only found when the latter is allowed to influence the former.

Like Berlin Game, this is a book about practical activity being the only truly valuable commodity. I’m now hanging, wondering what can happen in London Match, aware that Samson’s children are still in play and that Fiona has lost more than she wished to. The complexity of office life has been somewhat lessened but the structure is still there, and his strength of character has paid off with Gloria Kent, while Werner is left stranded and lonely. I’m on the edge of my seat.

Possibly related posts:

1. London Match by Len Deighton (Ian’s book 2, 2010)
2. Berlin Game by Len Deighton (Ian’s book 13, 2009)
3. Berlin Game by Len Deighton (Shane’s book 4, 2010)
4. Out of Sheer Rage by Geoff Dyer (Shane’s book five, 2010)