Yet more detective fiction, this time in the guise of espionage and the Secret Service.
Diamonds are Forever
Ian FlemingPenguin 2009, Paperback, 304 pages, £7.99
Oddly for a secret agent, James Bond has been roped in to investigating a diamond smuggling operation. A dentist in Africa gives the stones to a man in a helicopter who takes them to London [...]
As with my posts about the previous two books in this trilogy, there are going to be spoilers below. Go and read London Match, it’s excellent, if you want to read any further.
London Match
Len DeightonCentury Hutchinson Ltd. 1985, Hardcover, 405 pages, £10.95
Really. I’ll just spoil it, and that would be a shame. Don’t click through unless [...]
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 (Harper Books)
Len DeightonHarper 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 [...]
Great book. To discuss it all I’m going to have to give away bits of the ending and things that happen along the way, and as it’s a book about spies, I should warn you: here be spoilers. Just so you know.
Berlin Game (Harper Books)
Len DeightonHarper 2010, Paperback, 432 pages, £7.99
Bernard Samson, a well-established and senior, but [...]
Still with thrillers but back to more traditional territory with Len Deighton. The nameless spy who became Michael Caine’s Palmer has been posted to Paris and is engaged in a thoroughly routine bit of espionage work.
He has a cover, he has a place to live and a social and professional circle and he has a [...]
On I go with reading the James Bond books. I had planned to read them in order, what with being a bloke and everything, but I was going on holiday and Waterstone’s in Camden didn’t have Live and Let Die that day, so I picked another one at random. Thunderball it was.
It’s a yarn about [...]
More than a month into the year and I hadn’t finished a single book, so I picked up something I was pretty sure I was going to like to assuage the inner voices.
It’s fairly appropriate really, as where The Ipcress File (book 9, 2007) was about class, Funeral in Berlin is about guilt. German guilt [...]
