Spy vs. Spy

I have always had fond memories of Bernard Samson as the most likeable fictional spy I have ever read about. Fortunately the story line of almost all the Len Deightons I have read had completely slipped my memory, making the re-reads well worth it. Berlin Game is still brilliant after all these years – the best spy story I have ever read including the Le Carre trilogy as well. Mexico Set and London Match were more like unnecessary appendages, written just to let us get more of Samson than to have any meaningful story. Hadn’t read the Spy Hook, Line and Sinker trilogy before. Also superfluous as regards story – the same characters going around the mulberry bush again. Spy Sinker, written from Samson’s wife’s viewpoint, filled in the story gaps but was horrible, lacking the main reason one reads the stories – Samson’s first person narrative. I was able to get my hands on the first of the next trilogy – Faith. More going round the mulberry bush, but having more action. Very enjoyable, once again. Must read Hope and Charity, as well as Winter.

Frederich Forsyth’s Fourth Protocol had a brilliant first half, one of the best spy stories I have read. But the plot is totally over the top – toning down the hyperbole would have made it much more enjoyable. Why bring nuclear weapons into it at all when an ordinary bomb would have served equally well? The Negotiator, which I read next was worse – a million characters whom I didn’t bother to keep track, except the main protagonist. There were some good moments though. But when Margaret Thatcher and Mikhail Gorbachev are fictional characters in a book – I cant stomach that. Especially when the so called exposure of the villain occurs at the end. You have been wondering - Is it the Vice President? The Secretary of State? Director of FBI or CIA? And then it turns out to be some completely anticlimactic Deputy Director of FBI (or whatever his position was – I have already forgotten). Disastrous ending. Forsyth's latest book The Afghan was also excellent, but not for his story. Instead, it’s the re-telling of the riveting details of the 9/11 bombing, the Afghan war, the assassination of Ahmed Shah Masood and the fight at Tora Bora which grip one. (Just as Odessa File is riveting just because of the details of Nazi genocide rather than the main story – I guessed the ending of Odessa File on the present re-read without difficulty, despite having forgotten the story completely) The actual fictional part of the Afghan was pathetic. Truth indeed has become stranger and more entertaining than fiction.

And shootout at Tora Bora seems to have replaced the shootout at OK Corral in the popular imagination.