Word: deighton
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...pretty good spy thriller can be spotted now and then, ducking around a corner or disappearing into a manhole, as Len Deighton slowly brings his three-volume tale of find-the-mole to a close. Readers who have stayed with the author from the beginning may have forgotten that Berlin Game, the first book in the trilogy, begins with British Intelligence Agent Bernard Samson and his old friend Werner Volkmann doing a bit of surveillance near the Berlin Wall. Samson, sour and middle-aged, asks, "How long have we been sitting here?" and Volkmann, an ironist, replies, "Nearly a quarter...
...superiors. These careerists are, variously, twits, fops, climbers and pooh-bahs whose entire interest is in position, perks and, after they have dithered and muddled for a sufficient number of decades, knighthoods. Samson's boss Dicky Cruyer is a particularly loathsome species of well-connected idler, and Deighton takes great pleasure in demonstrating this. " 'Let me tell you something, Bernard,' said Dicky, leaning well back in the soft leather seat and adopting the manner of an Oxford don explaining the law of gravity to a delivery boy . . . 'It could get messy; people with a history of bad decisions are going...
...measure of Deighton's considerable skill is that despite Samson's chronic grousing, anyone who starts Berlin Game is likely to persist through to the end of London Match. The story could have been brilliant if some ferocious editor had slashed it ruthlessly to one taut volume. Even so, the texture is wonderfully gray and grainy, and the scenes between Volkmann and Samson in the first and third novels are authoritative. Samson's predicament is a metaphor of middle age, if anyone should need one. And in the days of constant spy revelations, the central questions continue to haunt...
...survey by Sarah Deighton, who interned with OCS while a student at the Graduate School of Education, showed that the number one career choice among students in all years—who were asked to “indicate the top three fields you are most interested in working for after you graduate”—was working with nonprofit organizations...