Mister 8

Through July, or at least until I run out of things about which to talk, we’ll be looking at the Harry Palmer series of novels (in which the character doesn’t actually have a name), their author — Len Deighton, the films based on them, the star of those films — Michael Caine, and the television movies that followed. I will be re-reading the whole series of novels, re-watching the films, and giving my thoughts on all I encounter. I’ll inevitably be drawing heavily on the collection of Kees Stam, author of The Harry Palmer Movie Site, and Rob Mallows, creator of the Deighton Dossier, and other odds and ends that I’ve turned up over the years.

Rob, mentioned in the introductory sentence above, let members of the Len Deighton Yahoo! group know of an eBay auction that I thought I should pass along here:

In case anyone’s interested, there’s an eBay auction currently going on for a copy of Ark 10.

This is extremely rare, and worth bidding for (currently £9.99 at time of posting). Ark was the in-house magazine if you will of the Royal College of Art, which Deighton attended. He edited this and has an article ‘Abroad in London’ in it which is one of his first ever published works!

These rarely come up, so fans might want to consider bidding. The auction’s here.

This information is supplemented by the illustrations page at Rob’s Deighton Dossier, where he writes:

The production of Ark magazine, which subsequently became a commercial operation creating and designing a high end periodical on art, design and words, was something in which Len Deighton was involved at the time. Many of those who worked with Deighton on Ark and other projects went on themselves to become leading designers and artists. In conversation with Seago, he recounts this time:

“No one knew what the hell ARK was for. When I took over the art editorship at the end of 1953 I said, ‘What’s it all about? Is it a college magazine? Is it something to sell the College to manufacturers and employers? No one knew. It was typically English. No one could decide. In England the whole way of living is predicated upon never defining anything because that way no one can get it right or wrong.”

And courtesy of the Len Deighton Illustrations blog, we have some sample art (more available at the Deighton Illustrations blog post on ARK 10):

Ark 10 Front Cover

Len Deighton Abroad In London

Through July, or at least until I run out of things about which to talk, we’ll be looking at the Harry Palmer series of novels (in which the character doesn’t actually have a name), their author — Len Deighton, the films based on them, the star of those films — Michael Caine, and the television movies that followed. I will be re-reading the whole series of novels, re-watching the films, and giving my thoughts on all I encounter. I’ll inevitably be drawing heavily on the collection of Kees Stam, author of The Harry Palmer Movie Site, and Rob Mallows, creator of the Deighton Dossier, and other odds and ends that I’ve turned up over the years.

The IPCRESS File by Len Deighton

I’m horrible at writing reviews, and I generally dislike reading them. Perhaps it is the English major in me that resents summing up works of literature and film into six paragraphs, or the ability of the reviewer to discredit and dismiss the work of a creator in a few sentences. Of critics working today, I prefer the writings of Roger Ebert, who uses the art he’s discussing as a touchstone to make art of his own. I am no Roger Ebert, however, and so instead of a by-the-books review, I want to make a series of points that I hope will start conversation amongst those of you who have read The IPCRESS File (and perhaps even those who haven’t).

For those who haven’t, please note that you should assume a general spoiler warning for the next week’s worth of posts. And, really, the book has been out for 37 years. Why haven’t you read it yet?

A brief summary: Our narrator, an anonymous agent of British intelligence organization W.O.O.C. (P) is called in to explain details of a recent affair to the Minister of Defense, and in doing so, shares the story with the reader as well. He’s leaving the intelligence wing of the war office, where he workedunder a stifling bureaucrat named Ross, for the civilian W.O.O.C. (P) where he finds himself under the command of a no-nonsense boss, Dalby. Dalby holds weekly screening sessions in which the agents under him (including the priveleged Chico and the austere Alice) view film of their quarry.

One of these quarry is codenamed Jay, an opportunist, who it turns out is trafficking scientists to the Soviet Union. The narrator is sent to buy back one such scientist, and when his efforts fail, he accompanies Dalby to Lebanon to take himi back by force. Shortly after, Dalby takes leave and puts our narrator in charge of operations. As new head of the department, he authorizes himself an attractive young assistant, Jean, and works on the missing scientists until Dalby returns with news of an American nuclear test. The narrator, Jean and Dalby head out to the Tokwe Atoll for the test, it turns out that Dalby is a traitor who frames the narrator as one, and our hero winds up in Hungary…or really London, and finds himself at the heart of a massive brainwashing conspiracy.

That’s pretty much the long and short of it.

It may come as a surprise, because, after all, I run this website, I’m often underwhelmed by the thriller novels I attempt to read, because they all read as knock-offs, formulas in which the main character can be substituted for “x.” Reading The IPCRESS File was a refreshing change from that feeling, as Deighton has constructed a highly effective novel. I believe the strength of the book lies in its narrator, who, as many have said, is the opposite of the James Bond character. He has the patina of realism, an often helpless agent choked by the bureaucracy that inevitably comes in government work. He also does not possess, as noted in the post on the Angry Young Men movement, the privilege by birth of Bond. Though we hear little of his parents (we only see mention of a letter from his aunt), we might easily assume that they were not the types to die in mountain climbing accidents in the alps. The narrator’s response to these issues is not to lash out angrily, like Jimmy Porter, but to stay cool and sardonic, working within the system to benefit himself.

The view on bureaucracy is seen best in the pairing of Ross (“…a quiet Intellect happy to work within the strict departmental limitations imposed upon him. Ross didn’t mind; hitting platform five at Waterloo with rosebud in the buttonhole and umbrella at the high port was Ross’s beginning to a day of rubber stamp and carbon paper action…”) and Dalby (I find him best described, not physically, but by this bit:  “Dalby made his wishes known by peremptory unequivocal orders; all his staff preferred them to the complex polite chat of most Departments as especially did I as a refugee from the War Office.”). Though Ross wins out in the end, as it turns out that his polite, quiet rubber stampings were masking extensive machinations and schemes, the direct style of Dalby is still somewhat seen as preferred. Even after he’s revealed as a traitor, a comparison to Dalby is, “as near Alice ever came to admiration.”

Still, even in this department there’s carbon copying to be done, and what is amazing is that Deighton utilizes these scenes of the narrator in his office surrounded by paperwork to increase our understanding and appreciation of the character. While other heroes of espionage thrillers, or really, thrillers in general, set forth from the first chapter of the book, calvinistically clinging to the path that will take them to the last chapter, leads and progress come for our narrator only occasionally; the rest of his time is spent reading weekly intel round-ups, attending dreaded conferences and filing expense reports. In addition, this case is only one of many. While this book necessarily focuses on the IPCRESS file, the narrator points out in a conversation with Ross that, “We’ve got 600 open files in my office, that’s no secret, and my only interest at the moment is making it five hundred and ninety-nine even if I don’t get the Minister’s certificate of Good Housekeeping doing it.” In the end of the novel, closing the file on Jay and the IPCRESS operation only means opening another on his superiors.

Which is not to say that the novel doesn’t contain action and adventure. It does, and the action comes in short, surprising outbursts — the raid to recapture Raven in Lebanon, the chase across the Atoll and the interrogation after, and the extended torture in the London house — where the narrator demonstrates his unease at dealing with such situations (“Dalby had gone to look at the Nash while I vomited as inconspicuously as possible”).  While ostensibly the protagonist, our nameless agent narrator is most often a reactor, and not an instigator. This leads to one of the novel’s (some might say necessary) weak points, the final chapter, in which large gaps in the story are filled in via expository dialogue. It is in this final chapter, we find out that Jay’s punishment for his traitorous crimes is to head his own intelligence section, and Dalby’s recompense for playing outside of the system is death in a “car accident.”

The novel is populated by other interesting characters, each of them defined by a few rich details — Adem and his tiger-hunting uncle, Carswell and his rebellious choice to go into the statistics division, Cavendish and his book collection — some of whom we only see briefly, or in some cases (Grenade!) not at all.  I was struck most by the two female characters in the novel: Jean, who was hired, essentially, to be a sexual object but proves herself to be shrewd and more than capable of working for intelligence, and Alice, the bedrock foundation of the W.O.O.C.(P) who in many ways remains the only mystery at the novel’s conclusion. Though Jean does wind up in the narrator’s bed, these female characters are more often refreshingly portrayed as indispensable equals (in everything but pay) to the hero.

All in all, this was a grand start to a series of novels, and I’m already looking forward to reading the next in Deighton’s series. The novel definitely has its rough spots, but I, for one, prefer a tasty chunky cookie to one carved by a factory cutter.

This is, of course, only a starting point in discussing this novel. I hope you’ll respond in the comments section with your thoughts on both the book, and my thoughts on the book. Stay tuned for the rest of this week, where I’ll be looking at specific aspects of the novel. Also, mark your calendars for next Monday, when we’ll be watching the movie adaptation of the book at our first Harry Palmer party (you can watch “along” at home, but if you live near Albany, NY, shoot me an email!).

Through July, or at least until I run out of things about which to talk, we’ll be looking at the Harry Palmer series of novels (in which the character doesn’t actually have a name), their author — Len Deighton, the films based on them, the star of those films — Michael Caine, and the television movies that followed. I will be re-reading the whole series of novels, re-watching the films, and giving my thoughts on all I encounter. I’ll inevitably be drawing heavily on the collection of Kees Stam, author of The Harry Palmer Movie Site, and Rob Mallows, creator of the Deighton Dossier, and other odds and ends that I’ve turned up over the years.

Snobby Wiltons lobster

We’ll hopefully have a more in-depth post on The IPCRESS File tomorrow, but tonight, I need sleep as soon as possible. So let’s zoom out a level and look at our author Len Deighton again, and his interactions with another famed thriller, Ian Fleming. This will be the first in a series of pieces where we compare the two franchises of Palmer & Bond, and examine instances where they “cross over.” Sort of.

To start, I want to cite sections of LeRoy Panek’s The Special Branch; the British Spy Novel, 1890-1980, where Panek discusses what he believes to be the key difference between Deighton and Fleming, their literary heritage:

Both these writers rely, to a large extent, on reproducing mechanical, external elements of the hard-boiled hero without understanding the deeper significance of the figure. Deighton is different. For one thing he does not derive his inspiration from degenerate heirs of the hard-boiled story, like Spillane, as Fleming does. Instead he was lucky enough to start writing late enough to take in Raymond Chandler–a later-comer to the form, writing well into the fifties. Deighton learned much from Chandler. He alludes to him–through Philip Marlowe–in Spy Story, and it is evident that some of Deighton’s habits of description were learned from Chandler, as a passage from An Expensive Place to Die can illustrate:

“Summer rain is cleaner than winter rain. Winter rain strikes hard upon the granite, but summer rain is sibilant soft upon the leaves. The rainstorm pounced hastily like an inexperienced lover, and then as suddenly was gone. The leaves drooped wistfully and the air gleamed with green reflections. It’s easy to forgive a summer rain; like first love, white lies or blarney, there’s no malignity in it.”

Short sentences, similes, personifications, alliterations: this is figurative prose like so many passages in Chandler. In An Expensive Place to Die Deighton also makes a pretty clear comment on the other side of the hard-boiled tradition. Here a windy English writer holds forth in a bar on the subject of James Bond:

“‘But I have always immensely adored violence. His [Bond's] violence is his humanity. Unless you understand that, you understand nothing.’”

Whereupon someone punches the speaker into insensibility with great technique and precision. Only an imbecile or an anthropoid would, this incident says, love violence. Sam Spade does not love it; Marlowe does not love it. Even if deviants like Mike Hammer love violence, Deighton’s hero does not. What counts in the original hard-boiled writers is style, and here Deighton understands Hammett and Chandler better than shoals of smaller fish have. The essence of the hard-boiled story lies in placing a man in a perverse relationship with authority and circumstances. That man’s responses in word, thought and deed mark him off as a hero–as someone from whom readers can learn important things.

I hadn’t yet made the connection to Chandler myself until yesterday, when thriller novelist Jeremy Duns commented that, “Deighton wrote like an angel, and there are single lines in IPCRESS that are more exciting and evocative than whole novels by other writers.” This is also how I feel about Chandler, and I also feel that the shortcomings of The IPCRESS File — the reactionary, sometimes passive narrator who has to explain the holes in the plot at the end — mirror the shortcomings of much of Chandler’s work. But like Duns, I find it easy to overlook these elements in favor of the quality sentence-to-sentence writing.

Scholars of Fleming, including Kinglsey Amis and O.F. Snelling, cite other influences, most frequently Bulldog Drummond, but the difference in influences is still notable.

* * *

In my review of The IPCRESS File, I called the narrator character the opposite of James Bond.  Duns took me to task for this, noting that, “There are as many Bondish elements to the books as there are counters: he loves his food and appreciates other cultures, exotic locations, beautiful women throw themselves at him, gadgets in cars, technical expertise, a feeling of getting the inside scoop on espionage, etc.” With the caveat that I’ve only read one of the Deighton novels so far, I would agree with Jeremy to a point. The Deighton character, I feel, treats these elements more…I hesitate to use the term, but at this hour, I can’t think of another…realistically.

Bond is, for all intents and purposes, a fantasy hero (one critic, I can’t remember who, posited that writing the 007 novels prevented Fleming from going out and attempting to live the fantastic Bond lifestyle himself), and thus cannot veer from the course of the adventure. For instance, while it is clear that Bond appreciates the places he visits during his missions, his appreciation seems to come in the form of a dossier with bullet points — here’s the local history, the relevant landmarks, a handful of observations about the local folk — before he has to go off and shoot someone. The narrator’s enjoyment of, for instance, Adem’s house in Lebanon seems to go deeper. He is taken aback by Adem’s visits to see the animals don’t involve shooting — with either guns or cameras — but later, after a sort of sublime moment staring out at the landscape and listening to the opening bars of Mozart’s Symphony 21, he thinks to donate to Adem’s preservation fund. I’m not sure if the Fleming character, detached and often cruel, is capable of having a sublime moment.

There was a particular passage in IPCRESS that I thought interestingly mirrored a passage from Fleming, when Dalby takes the narrator to lunch:

Dalby didn’t fool about with expenses; we went into Wiltons and settled for the best of everything. The iced Israeli melon was sweet, tender and cold like the blonde waitress. Corrugated iron manufacturers and chinless advertising men shared the joys of our expense-account society with zombi-like debs with Eton-tied uncles. It was a nice change from the sandwich bar in Charlotte Street, where I played a sort of Rugby scrum each lunch-time with only two Ph.D.’s, three physicists and a medical research specialist for company, standing up to toasted bacon sandwich and a cup of stuff that resembles coffee in no aspect but price.

Over the lobster Dalby asked me how things were going in the work on Jay. I told him that it was going just great and I hope someone will tell me what I’m doing some day. I wouldn’t have remembered Thursday at all, apart from the fine lobster salad and carefully-made mayonnaise, if it hadn’t been for what Dalby then said. He poured me a little more champagne and crunching it back into the ice bucket, said, ‘You’re working with the same information that I am. Unless I’m wrong we are moving in from opposite ends to the same conclusion.’ Then he changed the subject.

…Which might be compared to the early chapter in Moonraker where M takes Bond to dinner at the private Blades club. Bond jumps at the opportunity, and is treated to an exquisite meal:

The head steward was already behind Bond’s chair. He placed a broad menu card beside his plate and handed another to M. ‘Blades’ was written in fine gold script across the top. Below there was a forest of print.

“Don’t bother to read through all that,” said M., “unless you’ve got no ideas. One of the first rules of the club, and one of the best, was that any member may speak for any dish, cheap or dear, but he must pay for it. The same’s true today, only the odds are one doesn’t have to pay for it. Just order what you feel like.” He looked up at the steward. “Any of that Beluga caviar left, Porterfield?”

“Yes, sir. There was a new delivery last week.”

“Well,” said M. “Caviar for me. Devilled kidney and a slice of your excellent bacon. Peas and new potatoes. Strawberries in kirsch. What about you, James?”

“I’ve got a mania for really good smoked salmon,” said Bond. Then he pointed down the menu. “Lamb cutlets. The same vegetables as you, as it’s May. Asparagus with Bearnaise sauce sounds wonderful. And perhaps a slice of pineapple.” He sat back and pushed the menu away.

“Thank heaven for a man who makes up his mind,” said M. He looked up at the steward. “Have you got all that, Porterfield?”

“Yes, sir.” The steward smiled. “You wouldn’t care for a marrow bone after the strawberries, sir? We got half a dozen in today from the country, and I’d specially kept one in case you came in.”

“Of course. You know I can’t resist them. Bad for me but it can’t be helped. God knows what I’m celebrating this evening. But it doesn’t often happen. Ask Grimley to come over, would you.”

“He’s here now, sir,” said the steward, making way for the wine-waiter.

“Ah, Grimley, some vodka, please.” He turned to Bond. “Not the stuff you had in your cocktail. This is real pre-war Wolfschmidt from Riga. Like some with your smoked salmon?”

‘Very much,” said Bond.’

“Then what?” asked M. “Champagne? Personally I’m going to have a half-bottle of claret. The Mouton Rothschild ’34, please, Grimley. But don’t pay any attention to me, James. I’m an old man. Champagne’s no good for me. We’ve got some good champagnes, haven’t we, Grimley? None of that stuff you’re always telling me about, I’m afraid, James. Don’t often see it in England. Taittinger, wasn’t it?”

Bond smiled at M.’s memory. “Yes,” he said, “but it’s only a fad of mine. As a matter of fact, for various reasons I believe I would like to drink champagne this evening. Perhaps I could leave it to Grimley.”

The wine-waiter was pleased. “If I may suggest it, sir, the Dom Perignon ’46. I understand that France only sells it for dollars, sir, so you don’t often see it in London. I believe it was a gift from the Regency Club in New York, sir. I have some on ice at the moment. It’s the Chairman’s favourite and he’s told me to have it ready every evening in case he needs it.”

Bond smiled his agreement.

“So be it, Grimley,” said M. “The Dom Perignon. Bring it straight away, would you?”

Even here, in the area of gourmet cooking where Deighton and his character are famous, I feel there’s a recognizable difference in the authors’ treatment of the menu. In Fleming’s novel, the food is near-unattainable, and much is made of rarity and ages and dates. In Deighton’s, the narrator recognizes his good fortune and is thankful he’s not eating a bacon sandwich (I also feel that, in addition to utilizing Deighton’s knowledge of cooking, the gourmet tendencies of the narrator are a form of over-compensation stemming from his class issues, but more on that in a later post).

In a way, these areas that Deighton’s character and 007 seemingly have in common actually do more to clearly delineate the differences between the two. But, as I said before, I make these observations with the admission that I’ve only read one book in the Deighton series.

Next time around, we’ll reprint a tongue-in-cheek account of the first meeting between Deighton and Fleming, written by journalist Peter Evans for The Guardian, later reprinted in the book For Bond Lovers Only, and examine reports that Fleming and Deighton discussed establishing their agents as part of the same narrative world.

Through July, or at least until I run out of things about which to talk, we’ll be looking at the Harry Palmer series of novels (in which the character doesn’t actually have a name), their author — Len Deighton, the films based on them, the star of those films — Michael Caine, and the television movies that followed. I will be re-reading the whole series of novels, re-watching the films, and giving my thoughts on all I encounter. I’ll inevitably be drawing heavily on the collection of Kees Stam, author of The Harry Palmer Movie Site, and Rob Mallows, creator of the Deighton Dossier, and other odds and ends that I’ve turned up over the years.

I must admit that I thought we’d have about 20 posts overall in this series, so I’m very delighted that we’re on File 015 and haven’t even gotten to the films yet! I’m also fairly happy that we’ve stayed on schedule, but want to warn you that posts might be delayed or even non-existent over this weekend as my wife and I travel to Chattanooga, TN (home of the famed Choo-Choo, and Rock Mountain!)  to see my wife’s sister get married. I’m taking the notebook PC with me, and let’s keep our fingers crossed that the hotel has a wireless connection, but the real issue might be having time to post.

In any case, let’s proceed with the second of our series on areas where Bond/Palmer and Fleming/Deighton cross-over, shall we? Much of today’s post is taken from an enlightening conversation at the wonderful James Bond fan/news site Commander Bond.net, where, in a forum post, the user Silhouette Man asks the question:

In the 2000 Updated edition of ‘The Bond Files’ by Andy Lane and Paul Simpson, there is a piece which states that Fleming and Deighton had discussed co- ordinating their novels together. Here is the quote from page 394,

“Fleming enjoyed Deighton’s books, and once suggested (perhaps not entirely in jest) that they co-ordinate their books so that Bond was disparaging about ‘Palmer’ and ‘Palmer’ returned the favour at more or less the same time.”

Now I’ve never read this anywhere else and I was wondering whether anyone else at CBn knew any more. In Lycett’s biography it said that when Fleming was ill he returned Deighton’s ‘Funeral in Berlin’ when he was asked to review it.

User Atticus17 kindly obliges by reproducing the essay “Rendezvous with the Man From the IPCRESS File” from the book For Bond Lovers Only (my laziness led to my finding this series of posts — originally, I was just going to type up the account for you all, but I decided to Google to see if someone else had done the work for me!). This was written by Peter Evans, the journalist and friend of Deighton’s whom I’m sure you remember from The Truth About Len Deighton, and who was one of the first to interview Deighton even before the success of The IPCRESS File.

For Bond Lovers Only

He selected a cigarette, placed it in his ebony holder and lit it with a gold lighter. It was all done with the studied rhythm of a man playing for time while thinking of exactly what to say.

“I look forward to meeting this fellow,” Ian Fleming said finally, tilting his head toward the ceiling and gently blowing smoke after his words.

With one finger he pushed aside the curtains of the private room over the restaurant not very far from Tottenham Court Road and looked down into the street.

“Yes, indeed,” he said after another long moment, “it should be a most fascinating encounter. Even perhaps memorable.”

Indeed. For the missing guest was Mr. Len Deighton, the author whose first spy book, The IPCRESS File, had made him the biggest threat to the suave Mr. Fleming and his equally suave hero James Bond since SMERSH.

Deighton’s unnamed agent has been acclaimed by the critics, snapped up by Bond’s own publishers, Jonathan Cape, and signed by the same producers who filmed Doctor No.

What is even more fascinating is that where Mr. Fleming is reputed partly to have modelled Agent 007 on himself, so Deighton’s fumbling, cheapskate hero has more than a touch of his illustrious creator.

Mr. Fleming, who himself nominated The IPCRESS File among the “Books of the Year”, said: “I simply have to meet him, you know. It is important to know the kind of fellow you are up against.”

Some fifteen minutes late, Deighton arrived — an untidy man in one of those 1963 suits with the 1957 price tags. He made it look lumpy. On his cufflinks were colour pictures of Littlehampton. He is a man who looks in a perpetual state of surprise.

“This is a bit posh, isn’t it?” he said, shaking Fleming’s hand. “They very nearly didn’t let me in downstairs.”

Mr. Fleming arranged his face into a bleak smile. “It is rather a pleasant little restaurant,” he said, searching his rival’s face like a map-reader searching for a bearing.

There was the kind of sharp silence that occurs in the first round of a boxing match, when the crowd is waiting for the first punch to be thrown.

Mr. Fleming got up. “My favourite restaurant is Scotts, actually. Almost got arrested there during the war, as a matter of fact. They suspected I was a German spy. Awfully amusing.

“I was working for Intelligence and giving some U-Boat commander a slap-up lunch. The idea was to pump him full of scotch and stuff, then pump him for information. Cost about £25 AND the blighter didn’t talk. Saw right through it, obviously,” Fleming admitted pleasantly.

“Anyway, the waiters heard us yapping away in German and in no time we were surrounded by police. I got a most frightful rocket when I got back to my office.”

Deighton’s head began to rock slowly backwards and forwards, as if mesmerised by Mr. Fleming’s story.

“You were in intelligence yourself, weren’t you?” Mr. Fleming put the question across like an angry schoolmaster who has caught one of his pupils dozing.

“Yes. Air Intelligence,” admitted Deighton.

“I guessed as much,” said Mr. Fleming, a look of satisfaction seeping over his face like a blush. “You get pretty near the knuckle in some parts, I must say. Anyway, I realised you knew what you were talking about — as indeed I do.”

“Your next book,” said Deighton slowly, “is set in Japan.”

“Correct,” said Mr. Fleming, his face a mask. “It’s called You Only Die Twice. I’ve just been to Tokyo actually. Ran over on the old willow pattern route. Very jolly. Sake and kimonos and all that damn bowing amuses me enormously. Ever been to Tokyo?”

“Yes,” said Deighton.

“Fly?”

“BOAC,” said Deighton.

“Pleasant?”

“I was a steward,” said Deighton.

Again that circling, first-round silence. “I have a rotten feeling,” said Deighton moodily, “that my car’s going to be towed away.”

“What do you drive, old boy?” asked Mr. Fleming, perhaps sensing a common bond in cars.

“A beaten up old Volkswagen actually,” said Deighton, adding brightly, “but I’ve installed a telephone. Yours?”

“I’ve just got one of those new Studebaker Avantes. Nought to 60 in 4.5 seconds, 175 miles an hour with four passengers up. Supercharged, of course. I must say I adore it,” said Fleming.

Silence. Then; “You know what we should do?” asked Mr. Fleming suddenly. “We should start a running joke in our books. Like those chaps Crosby and Hope. I’ll get Bond to knock your chap — you really should give him a name, you know — and you can get him to tear the hell out of Bond.”

“Super,” said Deighton. “I’d love to knock Bond. You remind me of him in many ways.”

A thin smile traced across Mr. Fleming’s face. “Really? Well, I do identify myself with him in a few things.”

Mr. Fleming smiled a sad smile. “But of course Bond has a far better digestion than I have, and his prowess with women is considerably greater than mine, unfortunately. Needless to say, he has more guts.”

Deighton asked: “Do you honestly like Bond?”

Mr. Fleming thought about this question for a minute, then: “I began by disliking him intensely. I’ve grown to like him. To be honest, I think your fellow is rather more solid — indeed, Bond is often quite cardboard — but I have put him through so much it would be too disloyal not to like him now.”

It was, as Mr. Fleming predicted, a most fascinating encounter.

The user spynovelfan follows up with an extended selection from An Expensive Place to Die, which we wrote about yesterday:

On a staircase, a wedge of people were embracing, laughing like advertising photos. At the bar, a couple of English photographers were talking in cockney and an English writer was explaining James Bond.

A waiter put four glasses full of ice cubes and a half-bottle of Johnnie Walker on the table before us. ‘What’s this?’ I asked.

The waiter turned away without answering. Two Frenchmen at the bar began to argue with the English writer and a bar stool fell over. The noise wasn’t loud enough for anyone to notice. On the dance floor a girl in a shiny plastic suit was swearing at a man who had burned a hole in it with his cigarette. I heard the English writer behind me say, ‘But I have always immensely adored violence. His violence is his humanity. Unless you understand that you understand nothing.’ He wrinkled his nose and smiled. One of the Frenchmen replied, ‘He suffers in translation.’ The photographer was clicking his fingers in time to the music. ‘Don’t we all?’ said the English writer, and looked around.

Byrd said, ‘Shocking noise.’

‘Don’t listen,’ I said.

‘What?’ said Byrd.

The English writer was saying ‘…a violent Everyman in a violent but humdrum…’ he paused, ‘but humdrum world.’ He nodded agreement to himself. ‘Let me remind you of Baudelaire. There’s a sonnet that begins…’

‘So this bird wants to get out of the car…’ one of the photographers was saying.

‘Speak a little more quietly,’ said the English writer. ‘I’m going to recite a sonnet.’

‘Belt up,’ said the photographer over his shoulder. ‘This bird wanted to get out of the car…’

‘Baudelaire,’ said the writer. ‘Violent, macabre and symbolic.’

‘You leave bollicks out of this,’ said the photographer, and his friend laughed. The writer put a hand on his shoulder and said, ‘Look my friend…’ The photographer planted a right jab into his solar plexus without spilling the drink he was holding. The writer folded up like a deckchair and hit the floor. A waiter grabbed towards the photographer, but stumbled over the English writer’s inert body.

‘Look here,’ said Byrd, and a passing waiter turned so that the half-bottle of whisky and the four glasses of ice were knocked over. Someone aimed a blow at the photographer’s head. Byrd got to his feet saying quietly and reasonably, ‘You spilled the drink on the floor. Dash me, you’d better pay for it. Only thing to do. Damned rowdies.’ The waiter pushed Byrd violently and he fell back and disappeared among the densely packed dancers. Two or three people began to punch each other. A wild blow took me in the small of the back, but the attacker had moved on. I got both shoulder-blades rested against the nearest piece of wall and braced the sole of my right foot for leverage. One of the photographers came my way, but he kept going and wound up grappling with a waiter. There was a scuffle going on at the top of the staircase, and then violence traveled through the place like a flash flood. Everyone was punching everyone, girls were screaming and the music seemed to be even louder than before. A man hurried a girl along the corridor past me. ‘It’s those English that make the trouble,’ he complained.

‘Yes,’ I said.

‘You look English.’

‘No, I’m Belgian,’ I said. He hurried after the girl…

Silhouette Man returns with a bit from The Len Deighton Companion (I’m still waiting for this one to arrive via inter-library loan):

I recently got the hold of a copy of THE LEN DEIGHTON COMPANION by Edward Milward-Oliver and in his interview with Deighton, he mentions that HORSE UNDER WATER was published by Jonathan Cape. Deighton responds, “That’s right. And that enraged some people, who claimed I was now going to be trained as the successor to Ian Fleming, who Cape also published.”

And Atticus returns with a rare photo of Deighton, Fleming, and cover designer Raymond Hawkey who worked on both of their novels (more on him later this week!):

Len Deighton, Ian Fleming and Raymond Hawkey

Lots of nice historical background today, much more than I would have had to offer, had I not been so lazy! My thanks go to all who uploaded this info in the first place at Commander Bond!

Next up in this series: When Deighton wrote Bond.

Through July, or at least until I run out of things about which to talk, we’ll be looking at the Harry Palmer series of novels (in which the character doesn’t actually have a name), their author — Len Deighton, the films based on them, the star of those films — Michael Caine, and the television movies that followed. I will be re-reading the whole series of novels, re-watching the films, and giving my thoughts on all I encounter. I’ll inevitably be drawing heavily on the collection of Kees Stam, author of The Harry Palmer Movie Site, and Rob Mallows, creator of the Deighton Dossier, and other odds and ends that I’ve turned up over the years.

The internet connection did not work as well as I’d hoped this weekend (though the wedding went off without –well, really, with only the intended “hitch”), and now I’m behind as usual, after starting the month so well! Let’s get back on track, and reschedule our IPCRESS File viewing night for Friday, shall we?

Today, I want to highlight a recent appreciation of Len Deighton as written by thriller scholar / author Jeremy Duns in the Guardian for Deighton’s 80th birthday in February. Here’s a sample:

The books have one foot in the realist camp of the espionage genre, in the tradition of Eric Ambler and Graham Greene, depicting the spy game as a bureaucratic muddle. But Deighton was often very funny, and he had a way of nailing the atmosphere concisely. In An Expensive Place to Die (1967), a courier from the British embassy passes the narrator a dossier and asks him to read it and hand it back while he waits. “It’s secret?” asks our hero. No, the courier tells him – the photocopier’s bust and this is his only copy.

Duns acknowledges that Deighton, through both his spy novels and his London Dossier, had an influence on Duns’ debut novel, Free Agent, which I had the pleasure of reading over the weekend. Deighton can certainly be seen in aspects of the text, but Duns has taken the now-standard tropes of the thriller and turned them on their head. Because one good appreciation deserves another, here’s what I thought of Free Agent:

Free Agent U.S. Cover

Somewhere in the midst of Jeremy Duns’ debut novel, Free Agent, we begin pulling for the villain. And while the novel plainly presents the world of politics, espionage and war as varying shades of grey, the lead character of the book, Paul Dark, is undoubtedly a villain. This fact is clearly drawn for the reader by Duns in the opening chapters of the novel, wherein Dark murders his boss — an old family friend who is also his girlfriend’s father, no less — to protect a secret history of treachery, leaking British secrets to the NKVD.

Twenty-four years prior, Dark, under the guidance of his legendary father, Lawrence, took part in a Churchill-condoned secret mission to kill war criminals who had tortured and killed British soldiers, women and children. After one mission went awry, Dark found himself in a hospital, cared for by the beautiful Marxist Anna, who eventually in death delivered the catalyst for turning Dark to the Soviets.

Now, it’s 1969, and an older Dark learns, through the testimony of a potential defector, that Anna faked her own death, and that he might possibly be fingered as a double-agent. Complicating matters is the fact that, sitting across the table from him in the intelligence meeting where he hears the full story, is Henry Pritchard, the third secret member of the war criminal hunting squad. Dark has a short time to find the defector, then Anna, and prevent them from spilling the goods. His mission takes him to Nigeria, then in the midst of a brutal civil war, where he encounters a number of characters who make human nature seem quite horrific.

Duns’ novel draws on a number of historical circumstances to create an effective, mostly believable world for Dark to inhabit. At the immediate surface, there are the researched truths regarding the Nigerian Civil War, the plotting against Prime Minister Wilson, and the creeping influence of American soul in world culture. But beneath that is the lasting influence of the Cambridge spies, who proved that mass infiltration of intelligence networks was possible, and at the highest levels. The best of the spy novelists before him, like Deighton and Le Carré have also tread this ground, but in Duns’ hands, it is not so familiar. By making Dark the narrator, we find ourselves sympathizing with, if not completely understanding his treachery. And as he caroms from one inescapable situation to the next, we find ourselves rooting for the traitor to keep his secret against all odds.

Part of the appeal of the novel, and a partial exoneration for traitor-loving readers, is that it plays out as a redemption tale (or at least the first part of one). Dark realizes he’s been played for a patsy, and had already confronted his Soviet handler with misgivings about his work. The problem is that once you’re a double-agent, it’s hard to leave the game, as Dark finds out again and again. Dark waivers between acting completely in his own self-interest, and acting out of compassion or a sense of right and wrong. In the end, he’s forced to choose between his country of birth and the one he’s been serving for the past quarter century, though the reader can’t help but wonder if his actions would have been the same if the nationality of the assassination target was reversed. Perhaps Dark is, as the title suggests, truly a free agent.

All in all, this was a smooth, quality read by a writer so well-versed in the classics of the thriller genre that he was able to break convention and create something original. There were a few issues I had with the book — I lamented the lack of sympathetic female characters (a journalist named Isabelle at first seems a capable candidate during a car chase in Lagos, but later becomes fatalistically naive, perhaps as a mirror to a younger Dark), and I desired more closure for some of the colorful characters we met along the way (Duns does an especially wonderful job with these: Gunner, the Thompson-Bola family, Geoffrey Manning) — but perhaps these will be resolved with Dark’s next outing, Duns’ Free Country, a final draft of which I believe was recently submitted.

My final, speculative thought is this: if make-up and nerve gas worked once to fool Dark….

Through July, or at least until I run out of things about which to talk, we’ll be looking at the Harry Palmer series of novels (in which the character doesn’t actually have a name), their author — Len Deighton, the films based on them, the star of those films — Michael Caine, and the television movies that followed. I will be re-reading the whole series of novels, re-watching the films, and giving my thoughts on all I encounter. I’ll inevitably be drawing heavily on the collection of Kees Stam, author of The Harry Palmer Movie Site, and Rob Mallows, creator of the Deighton Dossier, and other odds and ends that I’ve turned up over the years.

John Tomlin, of the no-longer-updated-but-still-useful Unofficial Len Deighton Page, shared scans of this interesting article from Playboy, March 1966, with The Len Deighton Discussion Group on Yahoo! (where you can find the original PDFs in the file section). Written by Len Deighton, it’s an interesting look at the “spy boom,” which Deighton calls phony, the circumstances created by the Bond phenomenon, a brief bit on the creation of The IPCRESS File, and a lamentation of the wave of spy shows that Deighton feels are devoid of talent.

It’s an interesting article, and it seems to me that Deighton is working through his feelings on what role Fleming and Bond may have played in his own success, and attempting to absolve himself of guilt for inspiring (through his own spy successes) other works in the “spy boom” that he feels aren’t up to snuff.  It also may be interesting to note that in May of 1966, The Avengers was just hitting its stride in the Emma Peel years, and The Prisoner had yet to debut, although The Man From UNCLE had gone downhill in its second season. The sequel to 1965′s IPCRESS File was, I believe, currently filming, debuting in December of ’66.

Playboy May 1966

WHY DOES MY ART GO BOOM?
as the spy craze continues to spiral skyward, the author of “the ipcress file” files a personal report on the phenomenon

article By LEN DEIGHTON

What is a spy-book boom? I don’t think I like the sound of it. Does it mean that a lot of people are using the same subject matter? Then when the hell is the boy-meets-girl boom going to end?

Does it mean that books on this boom kick get sold whether they are good, bad or indifferent? Don’t expect me to get enthusiastic about that one.

Does it mean that readers are instructed to buy books that are booming? Getting warmer. Land booms are the harmonious conjunction of sucker and speculator, so why not book booms? I’ll tell you why not: Book buyers are book readers and book readers are no suckers. I’m a book reader.

There is nothing new about spying. There is nothing new about writing of it. Xenophon and Caesar wrote of it. The Bible perhaps owes a large part of its high sales to its spy stories. Other writers have tried their hand from time to time. Conrad, Le Queux and E. Phillips Oppenheim all had a deft touch. John Buchan showed how spies could serve imperialism when the going grew too shallow for a gunboat. Eric Ambler threw an idealistic left at the fascists of the Thirties and Graham Greene wrote some of the best of all between fulfilling his contract with God.

It was Maugham’s agent Ashenden, in the opening paragraphs of The Hairless Mexican, who set a portentous note, however, when he reported back to his intelligence chief R.;

“‘Do you like macaroni?’ said R.

“‘What do you mean by macaroni?’ answered Ashenden. ‘It is like asking me if I like poetry. I like Keats and Wordsworth and Verlaine and Goethe. When you say macaroni, do you mean spaghetti, tagliatelli, rigatoni, vermicelli, fettucini, tufali, farfalli, or just macaroni?’

“‘Macaroni,’ replied R., a man of few words.

“‘I like all simple things, boiled eggs, oysters and caviare, truite au blue, grilled salmon, roast lamb (the saddle by preference), cold grouse, treacle tart and rice pudding. But of all simple things the only one I can eat day in and day out, not only without disgust but with the eagerness of an appetite unimpaired by excess, is macaroni.’

“‘I am glad of that because I want you to go down to Italy.’”

R. Was a character who came before M, but apart from superficial appeal, is there much resemblance between Ambler, Buchan, Conrad, Fleming and Greene? There is a certain pre-Nuremberg-trial readiness to shrug off irresponsible behavior on the plea of orders. Indeed, Bond’s unswerving loyalty earned him an accolade from America’s extreme political right. But did Fleming do anything that could detonate a boom?

He exploited kinky sex and doll-like women. He enthroned the WASP when the WASP’s role in the world was a little shaky. But Fleming’s importance to the business world was the way he wrote always about what he called the serial character–James Bond–pursued a tested format and made a great deal of money. Fleming boomed.

It’s a well-known fact that people don’t make money because they are clever, highly trained or brave. They make it either because they are lucky or because they have a secret.

The secret-hunters pawed through Fleming’s writings, as intent as cryptologists. They are still doing it. “Spies,” they pronounced, “that’s Fleming’s secret. Spies make money. Spies boom.” In Fleming’s case they were right, but before the first Bond film, who had Fleming earmarked for boomsville?

In the spring of 1950 I was working on my first book–IPCRESS File. I was earning enough money as an artist to write anything I chose. I chose a spy novel, as I still do. I liked to have a problem or enigma that could follow the action of the book, but I wanted the book to be ragged and untidy, as life is. I wanted the characterizations and the dialog to control the enigma, rather than the other way round as had been the case with the detective novels of the Thirties, which had become puzzles rather than stories. Above all, I was interested in the permutations of deceit and mistake.

Too many people in the fiction I had read told the whole truth all the time and never seemed to make a mistake of judgment. I decided to write a first-person narrative in which the narrator would lie to anyone if it suited his purpose. This narrator would finally make such an error of judgment that his life would be saved by a man (Ross) who he had continually told readers was a fool. I dismissed the detective story because I didn’t know enough about the regular police force, and chose a secret-agent format so that I could use the political background that interested me. My hero was bespectacled, low-salaried and slightly overweight. There was no sex interest to speak of. It owed a debt to Chandler, but was inspired by Beat the Devil, an old Bogart-Lorre film which, prodding at greed, fakery and the English class system, had produced terror and belly laughs. At the box office, it boomed.

Autumn 1962 was the publication date of IPCRESS File and the opening of the Dr. No film. The critics were generous to me and, although it sounds unbelievable today, somewhat hostile to the Bond film. The income from IPCRESS was adequate by my standards, but Dr. No buried the box office in gold. It was an attractive sound that caught the ear of a goodly number of otherwise unmusical people.

Harry Saltzman bought the IPCRESS film rights. He said, “A lot of people are going to be after your book because of the success of Dr. No,” adding, “and I’m the only producer who, you can be certain, won’t make an imitation Bond film from your book.” Saltzman, of course, had options on the other Fleming properties and so didn’t need to. The news of the film-rights sale brought more Fleming comparisons, and when I changed publishers, so that Fleming and I both had the same one, some people–not including Fleming–were enraged. Donald McLachlan, editor of the Sunday Telegraph, went into print to say that he deplored the way I had been “…brought into the select stable of Jonathan Cape where Mr. Fleming was the first thriller writer to be trained for the big circulation stakes.” I was, it seems, “…being coached by Mr. Fleming for the succession.”

In the autumn of 1963, my second book, Horse Under Water, was published and Saltzman bought the film rights of that, too. There was more conjecture in the press. “Out-Bonds Bond” and “Anti-Bond,” they said. Out of curiosity, I read Fleming for the first time. I could see no connection whatoever, but no one was asking me.

Fleming’s Bond was a proved success, the industry read the entrails. Famous ex-novelists began to write literary critiques about Fleming’s meaning. But the big word on the book jacket was going to be Bond.

Publishers reshuffled their lists, old reviews were scanned to find comparisons with Bond. Sci-fi was out and spy-fi was in. If Fleming was going to be deified, then Buchan could be anthologized. Reprints were artfully retitled to include words like, “spy,” “secret agent” and “espionage.”

In the autumn of 1963 The Spy Who Came in from the Cold appeared, its film rights sold even before publication. It climbed onto the best-seller list and stayed there a history-making period of time. The last stragglers were converted. People who had found Fleming’s work rubbish began to see it as fun. Publications that had ignored Le Carré limped belatedly into print with reviews that saw his promise.

It was settled, then: Add up Le Carré, Fleming and Deighton, divide by three and the answer is spies. There was no time for long-term tests and, like Thalidomide, the spy formula was stirred hastily and a long-suffering public told to open its throat. But the public didn’t. The most interesting thing about the spy boom is to what extent it hasn’t been accepted.

Spy scent, spy trousers, film rights and series contracts. The book ads in the Times grew larger and larger, booksellers were faced with bewildering lists of books, all of them guaranteed to home in to the best-seller list. The flacks were inserting the zeros and omitting the options so that the entertainment industry seemed to have found what it had always been looking for–a substitute for talent. But of this wave of spy-boomery that hit the beaches complete with local money and pay-war units, how many reached the finish line? One would expect the best-seller list to be riddled with spy books by now. If they are there, they are hiding behind strange titles. The assault, however, continues despite heavy casualties. When Funeral in Berlin went onto the list, the combat troops were given new heart. Mr. Conrad Knickerbocker, writing in Life magazine, said, “…the Great American Washed at last have a folk hero of their very own.” He felt that all the “new-style thrillers” needed was a bitter hero and Berlin as a locale. Mr. Knickerbocker felt that they were appearing at “the rate of one per day.”

From the other side of the counter it didn’t seem so easy. Coward-McCann (Le Carré’s publisher) growled, “If it was as simple as that we’d all be retired to our yachts months ago.”

Considering the very high percentage of spy novels being published, it is remarkable how few ever do anything. Perhaps there is no magic way. Perhaps publishers, like mushroom pickers, just have to know enough to make their own choices. Perhaps the public is doing just that–boom, phony boom or no boom at all.

But if the best-seller list has been the scene of a fine defensive actoin, the small screen has long since been overwhelmed. It’s no coincidence that the American TV industry was chosen as ground zero for the spy-boom blast. Its programs ranged from A to D, and here was a chance to narrow the choice. The ad agencies–masters of the wishful think–relished the thought of a “spy trend.” A trend made the agency role important, a trend had changed often enough to keep the cash jingling, trends meant that some agencies could be trendsetters. And trendsetters could soften up teh ground way before the next trend was announced. “Spes,” the sibilants splashed across the polished-mahogany board rooms. “Give me a child of five and tomorrow we will have eliminated those troublesome writers altogether.”

The sands of the great writerless desert that is U.S. TV stirred.

Was it to be “Secret Gunn” or “77 Sunset Spy”? What’s the difference, the same gay rogues that outwitted the guttural villains of yesterday against back-projection Bermuda, two flats and a practical door, are there still, but now they are part of the spy boom.

The phony spy boom is another attempt to relegate humans to the role of cogs. Writers are not cogs. They are not even, although some reviewers see it otherwise, mutations and subdivisions of other writers. Nor is a book a refrigerator. A house that contains a Bellow can still use a Mailer. Plenting of room for Kipling as well as Eliot. Time for Bach and time for Beatle. If the industry succeeds in selling fashionable trends instead of using and paying writers, it will do so. The skilled painstaking publishers will go to the wall and hordes of mediocrity will eliminate writers in favor of packaging. If you think I am a vested interest, you’re right. If you think it wouldn’t be so bad, switch on your TV.

Through July, or at least until I run out of things about which to talk, we’ll be looking at the Harry Palmer series of novels (in which the character doesn’t actually have a name), their author — Len Deighton, the films based on them, the star of those films — Michael Caine, and the television movies that followed. I will be re-reading the whole series of novels, re-watching the films, and giving my thoughts on all I encounter. I’ll inevitably be drawing heavily on the collection of Kees Stam, author of The Harry Palmer Movie Site, and Rob Mallows, creator of the Deighton Dossier, and other odds and ends that I’ve turned up over the years.

Len Deighton: though interviews are not his style, he advises other authors to do publicity.
From Publishers Weekly, July 12, 1993
By Lisa See Kendall

Though most authors would give their eyeteeth for publicity, Len Deighton, best known for his British espionage thrillers beginning with The IPCRESS File, hasn’t granted an interview in at least 10 years. The publicist at HarperCollins, who is trying to promote Deighton’s new book, Violent Ward (Fiction Forecasts, June 21), has never spoken to the author, doesn’t know where he lives, doesn’t know if he’s married or if he has children. To set up an interview during Deighton’s visit to Los Angeles, PW calls the publicist, who faxes the agent, Jonathan Clowes, in London, who, one assumes, contacts the author. After a time and place are agreed upon–a hotel coffee shop, with the reservation under PW’s name–the whole communication process works in reverse. Two days before the interview, as Los Angeles waits nervously for a verdict on the Rodney King beating, Deighton’s wife (so he has a wife!) calls to verify. She leaves a number–not her own, mind you, but that of a go-between–and an alternate plan is formulated in case the verdict comes in and the city erupts once again in violence. Either Len Deighton is a spy–which book jacket photos of him in a trenchcoat certainly suggest–or he’s doing a superb job imitating the suspicion, intrigue and mystery of a clandestine agent.

Contrary to every expectation, Deighton turns out to be an affable, outgoing man. Within minutes, he’s describing his home–a 250-year-old house perched on rocks above the sea in Portugal; his wife, a Dutch woman who’s fluent in eight languages; and his two sons, who have lived and attended school in 10 countries in the last 15 years. A clever disguise for a clever espionage agent? Hardly. Just consider the man’s work habits. There simply couldn’t be enough time in the day to write as prolifically as he does and still do his bit for the British Empire.

Since 1962, Deighton has published 36 or so books: 23 novels, guidebooks to London, three cookbooks (including French Cooking in 50 Lessons– which grew out of his cooking comic strip for the London Observer–and The Action Cookbook), nonfiction works (Fighter: The True Story of the Battle of Britain, Airshipwreck and Blitzkrieg: From the Rise of Hitler to the Fall of Dunkirk), and technical treatises on the postal system of Germany in 1928 and the flying post office of the Graf Zeppelin. He’s been published in this country by a veritable smorgasbord of houses: Simon & Schuster, Putnam, Harper & Row, Mysterious Press, Atheneum, Holt, Rinehart & Winston, Harcourt Brace Jovanovich and Knopf.

In 1989, after Spy Line was issued, and after his editor Bob Gottlieb left Knopf for the New Yorker, Deighton moved to HarperCollins, where he received what was described at the time as a $10 million deal for four books: Spy Sinker (the last in the Bernard Samson series), MAMista (a tale of revolution and espionage set in a South American jungle), City of Gold (set in WW II Egypt), and now Violent Ward (which takes place during last year’s Los Angeles riots). To support Deighton’s latest effort, HarperCollins has planned a $100,000 marketing campaign and is sending Deighton on a five-city tour.

The author’s daily routine is anything but suspenserut. By 9:00 a.m. every day he is at work on his word processor. At 1:00, his wife serves his lunch and he listens to the news on the radio or TV. At 2:30, he goes back to his office and works until 7:00, when he and wife have dinner, after which he attends to the mail and looks at the newspaper. Just before bedtime, at 10:30, he reads through what he has written during the day. He follows this routine six days a week, and works on Sundays until lunchtime. He doesn’t smoke. He doesn’t drink. He’s simply a working machine who says he never gets tired, just “optical tired.”

Deighton took a circuitous route to the career that has brought him fame and fortune. A native of London, he was raised in a house that epitomized the highest strata of society. He often tells people, “I was born in a house with 15 servants,” then adds that his mother was the cook and his father the chauffeur. His first ambition was to be an artist. At the age of 18, he was drafted into the RAF where he became a photographer, shooting operations in a service hospital and dashing to crime and accident scenes with investigative units. Two years later, he took advantage of the British equivalent of the GI Bill and entered St. Martin’s School of Arts; then he artended the Royal College of Art. After graduation, he moved to New York where he worked as a magazine illustrator for Esquire and Good Housekeeping, and occasionally got a chance to design a book jacket.

In 1960, while on a three-month working vacation in the Dordogne, Deighton began writing The IPCRESS File–purely “for fun. I had the book around for a long time,” he notes. “I’d work on it, put it aside, go on vacation again, work some more. I thought I’d go on that way for the next 20 years.”

A series of fortuitous events changed all that. At a party in London, he met agent Jonathan Clowes, who soon afterward sold Deighton’s manuscript to Hodden & Stoughton in London and to Bob Gottlieb, than at Simon & Schuster. The book was oprioned by producer Harry Saltzman, who had just finished his first James Bond film, Dr. No, which, according to Deighton, was bruited in advance as a sure flop. The surprising success of that movie sparked an interest in the espionage genre, and The IPCRESS File did very well. Later, the film would make a star of Michael Caine–whose first hardcover book purchase had been The IPCRESS File–and the producer would ask Deighton to consider writing a sequel.

“I didn’t know what a serial character was,” says Deighton. “It had taken me several years to write The IPCRESS File, but I was so caught up in the exciting milieu that had come to me I said I’d do two a year.” Eventually Deighton was to produce another half-dozen books featuring the character of Harry Palmer. Not coincidentally, he became a magnet for people who claimed either that they were spies or the friends of spies. Most of the information he learned in this way was anecdotal; he incorporated much of it into his books, giving them the ring of authenticity.

As his readership continued to grow, Deighton began to explore the difference between English and American literary tastes. “I think Somerset Maugham said that it’s a characteristic of English literature that no one knows how to plot anything. English writers care about atmosphere, character and motivation. But in America, plot is very important. In this country, all you have to do is go into a restaurant, order a ham sandwich and a martini, and you’ll see a whole story unfold. Do you want rye or wheat, mayo or butter, the martini up or on the rocks? Americans are very immersed in the precision of the language. Americans read a work of fiction like a menu–what kind of ham sandwich will it be? If you bring the British demands for atmosphere and character together with the American demands for precision and plot, then you can have a very good book.”

To meet these demands, Deighton works five years in advance, planning several books at a time. Once he decides to go ahead with a particular concept, he spends six months on plot and research. “One of the richest things in a writer’s life is that people will cooperate with you,” he says. That cooperation has put him in the back of an F-4, the cockpit of a Concorde, the kitchen of the Savoy and the backseat of an LAPD squad car.

Perhaps his books are compulsively over-researched, Deighton muses, but his reasons run deep. “All you need is a profound inferiority complex: no training as a writer and growing up a victim of the English class system.” He thinks his persistence pays off. “Americans want all the loose ends tied up. If I forget something, I can always put it in the next book,” he says.

For a man who professes not to “mix with writers much,” preferring the company of cops, private investigators and artists, he is quite forthcoming with thoughts about writing and the business of publishing: “Plot is always the product of the scene in which it’s set.” “I always tell illustrators that book jackets are to prevent people who won’t like the book from buying it and bad-mouthing it.” “I tell young writers to write a blurb, pin it up and write to it.” In a more expansive moment, he says: “For simplicity, I say there’s no such thing as art. There’s only entertainment. Once you say that, a lot of things become clarified. It’s the difference between Renoir and Andy Warhol. The first needs no assistance from anyone to be entertaining. The second has a terrible need to be explained. When you think in terms of entertainment, the work can be so much broader.”

The Bernard Samson series is probably Deighton’s most successful “entertainment.” The seed was planted when a philandering friend asked Deighton to cover for him if his wife called. “I didn’t like that, so I suppose I thought about it more than I would have otherwise,” Deighton remembers. The writer part of him began to muse: “If you have a man, a spy, who’s married to another spy, then their marriage becomes a matter of life and death.” Deighton hung a chart on his office wall and began to plot the first six Samson novels, which would tell the story of how English agents helped to bring down the Berlin Wall.

The first three–Berlin Game (1984), Mexico Set (1985) and London Match (1986)–end up with Fiona Samson defecting to the east, the next two–Spy Hook (1988) and Spy Line (1989)–bring her back, and the final one–Spy Sinker (1990)–ties together all the “loose ends.” In 1987, between the two trilogies, Deighton wrote Winter, which covered the story of Bernard Samson’s family as well as 50 years of German history. “When I started writing the series, I had no idea the Wall would actually come down. But I think that even if that hadn’t happened, the story still would have been valid. There were signs in the German economy that it might happen, but it could have taken another 10 years.”

His prescient writer’s instinct again came into play with Violent Ward. Four years ago, he thought up the title and created the characters. When he finally sat down to write the book, he already suspected that Mickey Murphy–a criminal lawyer with a house in the San Fernando Valley and an office in the low-rent district of downtown L.A.–would become another serial character. “Here I was writing a book called Violent Ward and all of a sudden the first Rodney King verdict came in and pop, pop. The riots certainly weren’t part of the planning, but there they were.”

The book owes much to the tradition of Raymond Chandler. “I grew up reading Chandler. I think he was able to produce a wonderful effect by combining the serious and the funny,” Deighton observes. Violent Ward also presented the author with the opportunity to write about Southern California, where he has taken to spending several months a year, avoiding the rainy seasons of whatever country he is living in at the time.

Deighton is currently putting the finishing touches on a 15-year project, a 700-page nonfiction book titled Blood, Tears and Folly. He calls it “a hobby. The book asks the question, ‘If we won the war, why are the Japanese and the Germans so rich?’ “Deighton elucidates. “It’s a history of World War II that attempts to show that some things are inevitable.”

Once Blood, Tears and Folly is behind him, Deighton will go back to his five-year plan. He’s working on notes for his next novel and putting together some ideas for another cookbook. Bernard Samson fans will be pleased to know that Deighton has hung a chart on his office wall and is plotting another three-book series tentatively called Faith, Hope and Charity. (So far, no publisher has been announced for these four books.)

Finally, Len Deighton has come in from the cold, as it were, leaving the solitude of his word processor to display his considerable charm to a long ignored public. “I advise writers to do publicity,” he says. Realizing the irony of this statement, he laughs, then adds, “I always have good advice, but I don’t always follow it myself. Interviews are very stressful for me. The greatest thing you can tell a writer is, ‘You don’t have an interview appointment for 10 years.’”

Through July, or at least until I run out of things about which to talk, we’ll be looking at the Harry Palmer series of novels (in which the character doesn’t actually have a name), their author — Len Deighton, the films based on them, the star of those films — Michael Caine, and the television movies that followed. I will be re-reading the whole series of novels, re-watching the films, and giving my thoughts on all I encounter. I’ll inevitably be drawing heavily on the collection of Kees Stam, author of The Harry Palmer Movie Site, and Rob Mallows, creator of the Deighton Dossier, and other odds and ends that I’ve turned up over the years.

‘I’m letting you take over this whole department,’ [Dalby] said at last. ‘Now don’t get all excited, it’s only going to be for about three months, in fact less if I’m lucky. You are a bit stupid, and you haven’t had the advantage of a classical education.’

Dalby was having a little genteel fun with me. ‘But I am sure you will be able to overcome your disadvantages.’

‘Why think so? You never overcame your advantages.’

The IPCRESS File by Len Deighton

One of the things I like best about British literature, film, television, and general media, is the constant presence of class issues, whether on the surface, or bubbling underneath. I grew up a working class American — when I was a kid, my dad supported our family of four on a factory salary (and this was during the Reagan years!) — and, until I started expanding my reading horizons, I felt fairly alone in the world. Admittedly, our class situation is a little different: our accents don’t betray us, and for the most part, we’re all piled into the same schools regardless of class. But still, we definitely have class issues in America, though most of our socially conscious art focuses on multi-culturalism.

As touched upon in the post about the Angry Young Men, class issues also permeate The IPCRESS File. The narrator character and his cinematic counterpart are often noted for their working class roots, compared to the globe-trotting playboy image set forth by other spy franchises. And, again, it’s noteworthy to point out that author Len Deighton was also from a working class background himself.

One of the interesting ways in which class issues are presented in The IPCRESS File is in the narrator’s description of the other characters and their backgrounds. For each of them, their class or financial background is addressed, usually as part of the narrator’s judgment of their character. During his time as head of department, he would have likely had access to personnel reports, and so we can’t ever be sure if these judgments are from the official documents, or casual observations.

CHICO:

Chico always looked glad to see me, it made my day; it was his training, I suppose. He’d been to one of those very good schools where you meet kids with influential uncles. I imagine that’s how he got into the Horse Guards and now into w.o.o.c.(p) too, it must have been like being at school again. His profusion of long lank yellow hair hung heavily across his head like a Shrove Tuesday mishap. He stood 5 ft. 11 in. in his Argyll socks, and had an irritating physical stance, in which his thumbs rested high behind his red braces while he rocked on his hand-lasted Oxfords. He had the advantage of both a good brain and a family rich enough to save him using it.

Chico seems to be the character for whom our narrator has the least respect, and it seems directly related to the fact that he didn’t really earn his job, but had it handed to him by virtue of his background. This is probably the reason that he’s not very good at the job (though it may be worth noting that our narrator may not give a reliable account of Chico’s abilities), and might also explain why he goes missing for half of the book and no one seems to give a damn.

DALBY:

Dalby was an elegant languid public school Englishman of a type that can usually reconcile his duty with comfort and luxury. He was a little taller than I am: probably 6 ft. i in. or 6 ft. 2 in. He had long fine fair hair, and every now and then would grow a little wispy blond moustache. At present he didn’t have it. He had a clear complexion that sunburnt easily and very small puncture-type scar tissue high on the left cheek to prove he had been to a German University in ’38. It had been useful experience, and in 1941 enabled him to gain a D.S.O. and bar. A rare event in any Intelligence group but especially in the one he was with. No citations of course.

Public school in the UK, it should be noted, means pretty much the opposite of the US connotation. The Heidelberg duelling scar has always been one of the more interesting demarcations of class — a hideous disfigurement so posh that people often stabbed themselves in the face to get one. Dalby often seems to go against his class, and the societal niceties that come with it, but seems to still carry some superficial prejudices. Dalby’s interactions with the narrator, as seen in the excerpt that opens this post, often involve his pointing out the narrator’s education shortcomings and, occasionally, his surprise at his ability to transcend them.

CARSWELL:

On Tuesday I had Carswell in for a drink in the office. He seemed a bit depressed. He had three beers in quick succession and then began to tell me of his childhood in India. His father had insisted upon Carswell going into the regiment. The polo, the pig-sticking, the punitive actions against the tribesmen who enjoyed the fighting as much as the young English aristocrats did, the sun, horses galloping in the open hill country, drinks and mess dinners, the other young subalterns wrecking the mess in horseplay. All these things were things of his father’s life, and when his father died he immediately asked for a posting to another unit. He chose a unit as diametrically opposed to his father’s as he could think of; Indian Army Statistical Office,
Calcutta. He had no interest or aptitude for the work. He did it as a quiet rebellion against his life until then.

…Carswell must have been the only officer in the entire British army who had deliberately thrown away a commission in a crack cavalry regiment in exchange for a dreary office job that had left him nudging sixty, a substantive captain, with little or no prospect of a move past substantive major, if that.

Before this chat, the narrator had been frustrated with overseeing Carswell’s dead-end statistical work, but I feel that afterwards, there’s a bit more respect from one class anomaly to another.

MURRAY:

I talked to Murray about everything except the job. Murray was a tall and large-muscled man who, had he been a few years younger would have made a John Osborne hero. His face was large, square and bony, and it would be equally easy to imagine him as an R.S.M. or the leader of a wildcat strike.

He was efficient and responsive to orders in a way that more than faintly criticized his superiors by its very efficacy. It reminded me of those N.C.O.’s who drilled officer cadets. His hair was tightly arranged across his lumpy skull. His eyes, thin slits, as though he constantly peered into a brightness, would wrinkle and smile without provocation. Unlike Chico, Murray’s smile wasn’t motivated by a desire to join other men – it separated him quite deliberately from them. We talked about Bertold Brecht and the 1937 Firearms Act, and it amused Murray that I was probing around amongst his acquisition of knowledge. He’d not liked the peacetime army and it was understandable, there was no place in it for a man with a paperback edition of Kierkegaard in his pocket. The sergeants tried to talk like officers and the officers like gentlemen, he said. The mess was full of men who’d sit in a cinema all the weekend and come back with stories about house-parties on the river.

‘Georgian houses,’ Murray said, and he had a great love for beautiful buildings. ‘The only Georgian houses they’d ever been to were George the Fifth ones along the by-pass.’

Note the mention of John Osborne, whom we discussed before. Note also that in Murray and the narrator’s view, there’s seemingly a checklist for class pretension (“Attend party at Georgian house? Check Yes or No.”) that both misses the point, and breeds rebels like the two of them.

JEAN:

Even though Led’s wasn’t the place, she passed me a pale-green filing card, It was about six by ten inches. It was a personnel-type card, such as any large commercial firm might employ, but in the space for name and address there was only an irregularly spaced series of rectangular holes. Under this in panels was information. Born twenty-six years ago in Cairo. Norwegian father, Scottish mother, probably not short of the stuff since she went to school in Zurich between ’51 and ’52, and decided to live there. Perhaps working for British Diplomatic Service in Switzerland – it wouldn’t be the first time an Embassy typist came into the department. Her brother holds Norwegian citizenship, works for a shipping firm in Yokohama – hence presumably H.K. then Macao – where she worked part-time for the tourist bureau there – a Portuguese set-up. The panel marked T was bursting with entries. She spoke Norwegian, English, Portuguese, German, French, ‘FSW, that is, ‘fluent in speech and writing’, and Mandarin, Japanese and Cantonese ‘SS some speaking’. Her security clearance was GH7 ‘non stopped’ which means that nothing had been found to prevent her having a higher clearance if the department wanted to classify her higher.

In reading over Jean’s file, the narrator seems to comment in passing on Jean’s class background, mostly because he’s preoccupied with other things (“she was still my very first beautiful spy”).

The character on whom we get the least background info is Alice, the department secretary. We also get brief nuggets on our hero — he’s from Burnley, an industrial town in Lancashire, worked briefly with the CIA, and is described as, “a dark-haired, round-faced character; deep sunk eyes with bags under horn-rim glasses, chin jutting and cleft. On the back of the photos was written ’5ft. 11 in.; muscular inclined to overweight. No visible scar tissue; hair dark brown, eyes blue’.”

I don’t want to be too presumptuous, but the working class narrator seems to be a fictional manifestation of Deighton himself. In addition to a similar physical build, they also share a knowledge of fine foods. This, along with the narrator’s appreciation of culture and history, might at first seem pretensions themselves, but the narrator uses them in his class rebellion, using his wit and knowledge as weapons against those who underestimate him. The intelligence community is populated by elitists (still smarting from the well-educated upper class Cambridge graduates who’d been working for the Soviets — Burgess, Philby, McLean, Blunt & Cairncross — actually, they were still hunting Cairncross, I think) and in some ways, the narrator is able to succeed because of his background and his ability to recognize and function outside of class niceties.

For what it’s worth, Deighton didn’t see himself as a class warrior, but a mere chronicler of the class situation. Discussing the situation in a BBC interview (transcribed here), Deighton said: “I think at the time someone said, ʻyouʼre against the class system,ʼ and I said, ʻWell, Iʼm not against the class system, itʼs just Iʼm recording the fact thereʼs a class system, and I think I might be more against it if I noticed around me anyone who was against it.ʼ”

Through July, or at least until I run out of things about which to talk, we’ll be looking at the Harry Palmer series of novels (in which the character doesn’t actually have a name), their author — Len Deighton, the films based on them, the star of those films — Michael Caine, and the television movies that followed. I will be re-reading the whole series of novels, re-watching the films, and giving my thoughts on all I encounter. I’ll inevitably be drawing heavily on the collection of Kees Stam, author of The Harry Palmer Movie Site, and Rob Mallows, creator of the Deighton Dossier, and other odds and ends that I’ve turned up over the years.

The IPCRESS File by Len Deighton

This post is late, with my apologies, because I spent the evening watching a movie about bespectacled Harry P., whose rebellious attitude helps him navigate past suspicious authority figures to thwart evil conspiracies.  I have to say that I’m disappointed that I paid so much extra for a tiny IMAX screen, and 3D for only the first ten minutes of the movie. Also, that I watched two hours of teenagers freaking out about puppy love and not the evil wizard who intends to kill them all.

In case you, like myself, were wondering, here’s the Deightonless answer from JK Rowling’s Scholastic website:

Q: From where did you get the name for Harry Potter?

J.K. Rowling responds: ‘Harry’ has always been my favourite boy’s name, so if my daughter had been a son, he would have been Harry Rowling. Then I would have had to choose a different name for “Harry” in the books, because it would have been too cruel to name him after my own son. “Potter” was the surname of a family who used to live near me when I was seven years old and I always liked the name, so I borrowed it.

I feel as though we  haven’t addressed everything I wanted in our discussion of Len Deighton’s The IPCRESS File, but I also don’t want the discussion to grow stagnate, so today, I’ll be addressing a few, nugget-style wrap-up thoughts about the novel. Feel free to continue talking about the book in the comments section of this post!

The Framing Device

If you’ve read the prologue and first chapter, you’ll note that The IPCRESS File has a framing device wherein the narrator visits the Minister of Defence to explain the whole affair. The framing story was nothing new, but I’m always interested in the choices the author makes in presenting the story. Perhaps it’s all the times, as an English major, I had to answer, “In Hawthorne’s Scarlet Letter, why the customs house?”

Deighton’s decision in IPCRESS is interesting because the framing device itself has a frame. We are not eavesdropping on the narrator telling the minister the story of Jay, the brainwashing, Dalby, etc., but rather, he is telling us about telling the minister about the affair (complete with footnotes and an appendix — were these for us or the minister?). At this point, we’re sort of thrice removed from the actualities of the narrator’s experience, and so have to consider the validity of the details. One always wonders with first person narrators how faithful the related narrative was to the “truth” (if one can consider a “truth” having taken place in a fictitious world). Our narrator, like Chandler’s Marlowe before, seems quite witty and capable in the crunch, but it’s sometime hard to judge whether this is a construct on the part of the fictional storyteller. In IPCRESS, we’re bound to believe the narrator, again as with Marlowe, because he equally details the instances in which he was proven fallible.

Another interesting question to ask might be who we, as the reader, represent? The narrative is presented casually, conversationally, and with no attempt to keep certain details secret. In this framing device choice, Deighton has seemingly made us part of the intel community. And is this not part of the thrill of reading espionage fiction, to be included in the behind-the-scenes action of the “great game”?

The Americans

As an American myself, I was interested to read Deighton’s take on the American characters in The IPCRESS File. I was fascinated to see the “special relationship” playing out through the history (he spent time training with the CIA) and present (he’s warned by “Barney” Barnes of the impending double cross) of the narrator character, and the way in which race is presented. As I noted in my post on class issues the other day, we’re much more occupied in the US with issues of multiculturalism and civil rights for people of different races and genders (and while we’ve had some triumphant successes, such as our first black president, we’re still not perfect, as can be seen in the recent Henry Louis Gates Jr. affair).

The narrator notes that Skip Henderson was a rebel of his own for employing Barnes, in a time when the pressure would be on him to hire a white man intead:

I wished Jean would drop it. She just didn’t know a thing about Skip Henderson. Skippie Henderson who went to Korea and let himself be captured just so he could find out about collaborating in the prison camps; who came back to Washington with three bayonet wounds, a lungful of T.B. and a dossier that put a lot of ex-prisoner brass into the hot seat. In a courtmartial hot-seat. Skip stayed a captain for a long time after that. Prisoners’ friends had friends. But frightened? Skip? who had had the only Negro officer in C.I.A. as his assistant – Barney Barnes, and kept him against every sort of opposition that could be mustered. She just didn’t know what Skip was like. Smooth smiling Skip. Twenty years and they’d finally made him a major, and detailed a policeman to listen to his nightmares.

Later, there’s some interesting dialogue with epithets bounced back and forth between the narrator and Barnes. Were one not holding a gun on the other, I’d call it playful:

‘I’d just better be right about you, pale-face,’ he said.

‘You’d just better had, Sambo. Now ease down the drama and tell me what’s on your mind.’

Barney’s assistance only serves to get him murdered, which I think is a shame — he would’ve made a fine recurring character in the later novels.

The other Americans we briefly encounter are presented as horny devils that are easily tricked. Some days, I’d take offense at that, some days I’d feel that Deighton has us pegged (I feel the same way about CIA man Jeff Ross on The Sandbaggers).

As a nation, we do, it should be said, enjoy wearing flowered Hawaiian shirts whenever we get the opportunity.

Brainwashing

I’m going to hopefully make a post in the future about brainwashing and espionage fiction, but I want to direct you to a book featured by Jason Whiton @ Spy Vibe on the subject, Brainwashing: The Fictions of Mind Control: A Study of Novels and Films Since World War II by David Seed. Here’s an excerpt from what the book has to say on the subject:

When the narrator is captured and taken to be interrogated at length by the plotters, his ordeal is presented as a displaced rerun of Hungarian brainwashing conducted by an Eastern-looking official he nicknames “Kubla Khan.” The process is a composite deriving from Orwell and descriptions like Vogeler’s and Gallico’s, where beating, drugs and meaningless questions reduce the narrator — potentially — to the point where he will be ready to stand trial. The most surreal moment in the novel comes when the narrator makes his escape, only to find himself in a north London bean-patch. The “detention camp” proves to be a house in Wood Green.

With the exception of his brief imprisonment, the narrator’s account totally understates the impact of brainwashing. The “IPCRESS” of the title is an abbreviation for “Induction of Psycho-neuroses by Conditioned Reflex with Stress,” designating a process being carried out by an organization directed by the evil genius of the novel, Mr. Jay. Mr. Jay has devised a way to plan brainwashed figures in positions of authority and, through an experimental “synthesized environment” in Switzerland, to supply continental factories with docile workers. It is he who states a bold rationale for conditioning by appealing to social efficiency: “One of these days, brain-washing will be the acknowledged method of dealing with anti-social elements. Criminals can be brainwashed. I’ve proved it. Nearly 300 people I’ve processed. It’s the greatest step forward of the century.” Jay describes brainwashing in contradictory terms both as a means of bringing the antisocial within norms and as a means of conquest (“another terrible weapon” even worse than nuclear bombs). Jay’s practices are described as being congenial to Communism although his organization is notionally independent and the defeat of the latter becomes a purging of the British establishment and therefore its consolidation. Because Deighton’s chosen method of narration only allows him to give cryptic glimpses of Jay’s activities, the reader has to wait for the narrator to explain brainwashing in the concluding chapters.

It’s interesting to note that, according to Seed, the modern concept of brainwashing didn’t occur until the Korean War, and so the concept was fairly fresh when presented in Deighton’s novel. There are a number of parallels between the narrator / Harry Palmer and Patrick McGoohan’s Number Six, as I hope to discuss in a later post, and we see them go through similar processes of imprisonment and false trials.

Jay

Like Seed, I’m also a little disappointed that we don’t learn more of Jay, who, at the close of the book is given his own section of British intel to oversee. We see from his file that he’s a career opportunist, but we learn nothing of how he came to develop the techniques of brainwashing seen in the novel, nor really what he’ll be up to with his new department. I want to highlight the close of the novel, minus the epilogue and the appendix, wherein our narrator finds himself dealing with a new strange bedfellow. I love the parallel here between Jay’s asking him to dinner, and his being held against his will in Jay’s home in chapters previous. I also love that, in the end, there wasn’t a shootout, but merely Jay turning himself in (probably knowing that the technical information he had would put him in a good bargaining position):

That’s about all of the IPCRESS story. There has been a lot of work go through Charlotte Street since; some interesting, but mostly boring. Painter has a whole medical research lab working with him, but so far they have found no way of ‘de-brain-washing’ people, and many of the original network are still under the threat of the Treason Act, while some still forward reports under the impression that they are going via Jay to some foreign power. Of course I don’t let Jay handle them, just in case he gets ideas. I see Jay at the monthly conference with Ross, when we prepare the Army Intelligence Memoranda Sheet. He seems happy enough, and he’s certainly efficient. I remember another thing about Jays – they store food for winter. ‘Moving in from opposite ends to the same conclusion,’ Dalby said once, and every time I am with Jay I think about it. But I doubt if this was what Dalby meant.

Anytime I want Jay I know I can find him at the ‘Mirabelle’, and last Saturday morning I bumped into him at Leds. He wants Jean and me to go to dinner with him. He said he would cook it himself. I’d like to go but I don’t think I will. It’s not wise to make too many close friends in this business.

What more would you like to discuss on the novel The IPCRESS File? Please feel free to chime in in the comments section below!