Harry Palmer is a fictional character created by Len Deighton. He first appeared in the 1965 movie based on Deighton’s 1962 novel The Ipcress File. The Narrator is an unnamed first-person narrator in the novel, the name Harry Palmer only being used in the film.
The Harry Palmer books are a series of espionage novels by Len Deighton, featuring the eponymous character Harry Palmer. The series began with The Ipcress File in 1962 and continued with Horse Under Water (1962), Funeral in Berlin (1964), Billion-Dollar Brain (1966), An Expensive Place to Die (1967), Spy Story (1974), and Twinkle, Twinkle Little Spy (1976).
Harry Palmer is an anti-hero. He is not suave or handsome like James Bond. Instead, he is an everyman who is often smarter than those around him but does not have the social skills to get ahead.
He is a working-class man who has been drafted into the secret service because of his intelligence. However, he is not happy with his lot in life and is always looking for a way to better himself. This makes him a good agent as he is always willing to take risks.
The Ipcress File was adapted into a successful 1965 film starring Michael Caine as Harry Palmer. Two more films followed, Funeral in Berlin (1966) and Billion Dollar Brain (1967).
Harry Palmer Books In Publication Order
- The Ipcress File (1962)
- Horse Under Water (1962)
- Funeral in Berlin (1964)
- Billion-Dollar Brain (1966)
- An Expensive Place to Die (1967)
- Spy Story (1974)
- Twinkle, Twinkle Little Spy / Catch a Falling Spy (1976)
Harry Palmer Book Covers
Harry Palmer Books Overview
The Ipcress File
Len Deighton’s classic first novel, whose protagonist is a nameless spy later christened Harry Palmer and made famous worldwide in the iconic 1960s film starring Michael Caine. The Ipcress File was not only Len Deighton’s first novel, it was his first bestseller and the book that broke the mould of thriller writing. For the working class narrator, an apparently straightforward mission to find a missing biochemist becomes a journey to the heart of a dark and deadly conspiracy. The film of The Ipcress File gave Michael Caine one of his first and still most celebrated starring roles, while the novel itself has become a classic.
Horse Under Water
The Ipcress File was a debut sensation. Here in the second Secret File, Horse Under Water, skin diving, drug trafficking and blackmail all feature in a curious story in which the dead hand of a long defeated Hitler Germany reaches out to Portugal, London and Marrakech, and to all the neo Na*zis of today’s Europe. The detail is frightening but unfaultable; the story as up to date as ever it was. The un named hero of The Ipcress File the same: insolent, fallible, capricious in other words, human. But he must draw on all his abilities, good and bad, when plunged into a story of murder, betrayal and greed every bit as murky as the waters off the coast of Portugal, where the answers lie buried.
Funeral in Berlin
A ferociously cool Cold War thriller from the author of The Ipcress File. Len Deighton’s third novel has become a classic, as compelling and suspenseful now as when it first exploded on to the bestseller lists. In Berlin, where neither side of the wall is safe, Colonel Stok of Red Army Security is prepared to sell an important Russian scientist to the West for a price. British intelligence are willing to pay, providing their own top secret agent is in Berlin to act as go between. But it soon becomes apparent that behind the facade of an elaborate mock funeral lies a game of deadly manoeuvres and ruthless tactics. A game in which the blood stained legacy of Na*zi Germany is enmeshed in the intricate moves of cold war espionage!
Billion-Dollar Brain
The classic spy thriller of lethal computer age intrigue and a maniac’s private cold war, featuring the same anonymous narrator and milieu of The IPCRESS File. The fourth of Deighton s novels to be narrated by the unnamed employee of WOOCP is the thrilling story of an anti communist espionage network owned by a Texan billionaire, General Midwinter, run from a vast computer complex known as the Brain. After having been recruited by Harvey Newbegin, the narrator travels from the bone freezing winter of Helsinki, Riga and Leningrad, to the stifling heat of Texas, and soon finds himself tangling with enemies on both sides of the Iron Curtain.
Spy Story
An attempted murder, the defection of a highly placed KGB official, and an explosive nuclear submarine chase beneath the Arctic Ocean seem to have little connection to one another. But they are the sparks that propel Pat Armstrong also known as Harry Palmer into the heart of a brutal East West power play. And when Armstrong returns to his own apartment where someone who looks and dresses just like him has taken up his identity we are drawn into the world of spies and counterspies, plots and counterplots, that is Len Deighton’s unbeatable trademark.