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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
29 of 30 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Bits and Pieces, Odds and Ends,
By Pat Briody (Britain) - See all my reviews
This review is from: The Ipcress File (Audio Cassette)
I first read this book as a teenager in the 1960s, graduating from James Bond. After Fleming's action-based thrillers, Deighton was bound to come across as a little elliptical, and my response then was a mixture of bafflement and admiration. I had to read the three subsequent books in the series before I realized that it's a waste of time looking for logical plots in Deighton's work. Perfect plotters are authors who are never diverted by inconsequential things. But Deighton's writing is fuelled by the inconsequential and the peculiar.George Orwell once noted that Dickens's books are always packed with purposeless detail. Cheeses can't be just "cheeses": they have to be "Gloucester cheeses". His fictional world is very particular, very specific. In the same way, when you get to know Deighton, you are not surprised when his hero stops off at a delicatessen to buy a pound of - no, not just "butter", but "Normandy butter" - and when it goes soft in his pocket before he makes it home, we realize that this hero is a million miles from James Bond. Departing from the usual profile, Deighton's novels are character-based rather than action-based, and that's both a strength and a weakness. There are any number of slick, factory-produced thrillers around, but a Len Deighton thriller is a hand-made product. The edges are not quite straight, it wobbles when you try to stand it upright, and the doors don't quite fit. Those who look for a perfect solution to a clearly-stated puzzle should look elsewhere. What we get from Len Deighton is the kind of character-drawing that is traditionally the weakest element in popular thrillers. His descriptions are always arresting and invariably witty. Colonel Ross is described as having "the complexion of a Hovis loaf", and those who have seen a Hovis loaf will recognize the aptness of the image: that of a florid military type who is a little too fond of the bottle. He is also described as a gentleman - which Deighton defines as someone who never drinks gin before 7.30 p.m. and wouldn't hit a lady without first taking his hat off. If you like that sort of thing, you'll like Len Deighton. He is the Charles Dickens of thriller writers, with the same faults and the same virtues. And The Ipcress File is replete with both. Deighton's shaky and approximate plotting is more than offset by his observant eye for the endless varieties of human strangeness. Just one thing, though. Deighton is someone who doesn't just write, he re-writes. The care with which he crafts his prose is somehow evident on the page in the look of the sentences and paragraphs. He is a writer, and you should be a reader. So, my advice: forget the cassette. Go for the book.
7 of 8 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
The poet of the Spy story.,
By Robert Steele "Culture vulture" (London, England) - See all my reviews
This review is from: The Ipcress File (Mass Market Paperback)
As "The Sunday Times" first branded Len Deighton when this book came out, he is indeed the poet of the spy story. This was the first of the so-called "Harry Palmer" books which was the name given to his fictional hero when the movies came out. Although this isn't the best Len Deighton book (I reserve that praise for "Funeral in Berlin") it is still a splendid piece of work. Deighton's use of language although slightly tiring sometimes is still a pleasure to read. His witty comments about the characters in the book is a real treat. He is probably the funniest writer in spy fiction and definetely one of the funniest writers around. When Mr. Deighton wrote this book, the James Bond craze was going on, but people began to appreciate "Harry Palmer" and to them was an alternative to James Bond. "Palmer" is not smooth, suave, rich(he often spends half of his day pouring over his bills), or particularly handsome. But what he is not, he more than makes up for in his talent, ability and cunning. The tale is one of disappearing scientists, going over(or is being kidnapped and thrown over) the other side of the Berlin Wall. An unnamed middle-class spy("Palmer") having been transferred to a department called WOOC(P) is put on the case along with his colleagues from WOOC(P) who are small in number. The disappearances are linked with a man code-named Jay. "Palmer"'s adventure starts of very excitingly but you may think that it loses steam mid-way. It does not. I reccomend this only to readers with patience and a good memory. You may feel bored mid-way through the book and might decide to give it up. Don't. There is more coming up. Don't lose faith or hope. Have faith in Deighton and let him guide you through it. You will not be disapponted. At the end of the book, to understand what has happened you must recall a few of what you may feel are minor incidents and this is where good memory steps into the equation. "Palmer" may seem very ordinary and boring but you will only see his intelligence and remarkable talent later on. It may feel as if the book is just going down a deep bottomless pit, in that you may find it a very large bore and will want to give it up. Don't. This is simply Deighton letting the book mature. And then all of a sudden BANG! there is a big supermassive explosion and you find yourself hooked and compelled to go onto the next page. I highly rate this book. Read it with full attention right 'til the end and you will not regret. What seems to be inconsequential may be a turning point, so pay attention! 10 stars!
12 of 15 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Deighton's Debut,
By A. Ross (Washington, DC) - See all my reviews (VINE VOICE) (HALL OF FAME REVIEWER) (TOP 500 REVIEWER) (REAL NAME)
This review is from: The Ipcress File (Mass Market Paperback)
It is said that this debut from Deighton transformed the thriller genre, and after reading its elliptical not-plot, one can see why. This first in the so-called "Harry Palmer" quartet (the narrator isn't named in print, only in the films based on the books), firmly established the idea of spy as bureaucrat, rather than spy as action hero. The narrator is a sardonic, apparently middle-class, man who has been transferred into an awkwardly acronymed small department of the British espionage system, which is run by proper upper-class gents. There, his first assignment is to assist in the investigation of the mysterious disappearance of a number of British scientists. His problem is that information is so compartmentalized that he's never really clear what's going on or how to even begin.Most readers are likely to be equally confused as they try to unravel the tangled web of bureaucratic infighting that seems to shroud the whole book. It doesn't help matters when the scene shifts to Lebanon, where the narrator and his support team is involved in retrieving one of the scientists. The plot (such as it is) gets further confused when the boss goes off on assignment, leaving the narrator in charge of the section. And then the boss comes back out of the blue and they all troop off to a South Pacific atoll to witness some kind of American nuclear test. It's hard to see where Deighton's going with all this, and even more so when it becomes apparent that the narrator is actually under suspicion of being a Soviet spy. In the end, Deighton waves his wand and removes his handkerchief to reveal the solution to all the confusion, and while it more or less works, it somehow feels cheap. There's even a whole "explanation" scene where the narrator spells everything out to another character for the reader's benefit. The research into the espionage bureaucracy of the era is admirable, and Deighton does have a deft hand at description and some nice turns of phrase, but the plotting is so skimpy as to be noticeable in its absence. It's kind of interesting to read about spies as regular bureaucrats with expense account issues and bag wages owed to them, but that only gets one so far. In the end, for all the groundbreaking style, the "threat" to the
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