Len Deighton Books In Order

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.

Berlin Game

The field is Berlin. The game is as baffling, treacherous, and lethal as ever. This is the first in a series of three spectacular thrillers featuring British Intelligence agent Bernard Samson. Brahms Four wants out. This alarming signal means that one of Britain’s most reliable, most valuable agents behind the Iron Curtain is urgently demanding safe passage to the West. It sends a ripple of panic through the highest levels of the British secret service. Appropriately, it has fallen to Bernard Samson, himself once active in the field but now anchored behind a London desk, to undertake the crucial rescue. Even before Samson sets out on his mission, he is confronted with inescapable evidence that there is a traitor among his colleagues, a traitor planted by Moscow Centre. To discover who it is, Samson must sift through layers of lies and follow a web of treachery from London to Berlin until hero and traitor collide.

Mexico Set

This is the second book in the Game Set Match trilogy featuring British Intelligence agent Bernard Samson. The stage is set. Now, on the shadowy East West battlefield of Mexico City, British intelligence agent Bernard Samson must entice his opposite number, a disaffected KGB major, to take the final, dramatic step to defect. But the price of one Russian’s freedom must be paid in blood blood that Samson unexpectedly and incriminatingly finds on his own hands. On every side, he becomes dangerously enmeshed in an intricate web of suspicion and hatred; yet how can he fight when he doesn’t know where to find his most determined enemies or even who they are? The Game Set Match trilogy includes three spectacular thrillers featuring British Intelligence agent Bernard Samson. They are: Berlin Game, Mexico Set, London Match.

London Match

This is book three in the Game Set Match trilogy featuring British Intelligence agent Bernard Samson. In the conclusion to Deighton’s Game Set Match trilogy, the ultimate, decisive confrontation is about to take place between British Intelligence agent Bernard Samson and the British KGB agent who, from the very beginning, has held Samson’s entire life in delicate balance. Samson has succeeded in enticing a KGB spy to defect to England, but since his own wife went over to the Russians, he isn’t entirely trusted by his colleagues. With treason epidemic in London Central, a cloud of suspicion pas*ses over each senior agent, and each falls helplessly into Moscow Centre’s brilliant, complex trap.

Winter: A Berlin Family, 1899-1945

Epic prelude to the classic spy trilogy, GAME, SET and MATCH, that follows the fortunes of a German dynasty during two world wars. Winter takes us into a large and complex family drama, into the lives of two German brothers both born close upon the turn of the century, both so caught up in the currents of history that their story is one with the story of their country, from the Kaiser’s heyday through Hitler’s rise and fall. A novel that rings powerfully true, a rich and remarkable portrait of Germany in the first half of the twentieth century. In his portrait of a Berlin family during the turbulent years of the first half of the century, Len Deighton has created a compelling study of the rise of Na*zi Germany. With its meticulous research, rich detail and brilliantly drawn cast of characters, Winter is a superbly realized achievement.

Spy Line

British agent Bernard Samson finds himself inexplicably hunted as a traitor, forced to abandon his life, his job, his position, and plunge into hiding in the most dangerous and darkest corner of Berlin. What is happening? What has he done? Nothing makes sense until Samson discovers that the Secret Service has known all along where he is. In fact, they have never taken him off the payroll. And now they are prepared to return his freedom and good name but there are strings attached, strings that begin to tighten around his neck even before his plane lands in Vienna…
From the Paperback edition.

Spy Sinker

The long awaited reissue of the final part of the classic spy trilogy, HOOK, LINE and SINKER, when the Berlin Wall divided not just a city but a world. Bernard Samson is surrounded by puzzles and none more complex than Fiona, his wife and the mother of his children. But as a mystery, she is by no means alone. Can a man love two women at the same time? Can a man serve two masters? Tessa Kosinski, Bernard’s socialite sister in law, is not the ‘other woman’. She is as faithful to Bernard and Fiona as she is unfaithful to her doting husband. But she is vulnerable, and slowly she is drawn from the bright lights of London to the murkiest and bizarre corners of Berlin.

Faith

Len Deighton is back with a thrilling new trilogy in the continuing saga of Bernard Samson, the intrepid, insolent, and enigmatic agent of his previous bestselling trilogies.

After her years on the other side, Samsons wife, Fiona, is finally back in his life. But she knows about the affair with Gloria, and shes not taking it well. His boss warns him that his job is on the line. His best friend, Werner, is exiled and in disgrace.

Its 1987, and the Cold War is turning to ice. Ask no questions, Bernard, whisper the top brass at London Central, as they struggle to avoid the fallout from the deepest scandal in the Departments history. Everyone is grabbing for that one last shred of glory; nothing is as it seems. And Bernard, caught between his job, his ethic, his past, and the two women he loves, finds there is no one he can confide in, nothing to depend on except Faith.

Hope

Master spy Bernard Samson is back and in top form once again in bestselling author Len Deighton’s new thriller trilogy. As the Berlin Wall Begins to crumble, Bernard Samson is caught up in an ever changing situation and the devious squabbles that infest the service. And as cold war loyalties shift in the freezing wind, Samson is forced back into the ‘game’ he longs to leave, this time without the certainty that evil lurks only on the ‘other’ side. Caught between his job and his ethics, his past and his future, and the two women he loves, trapped in a maze of deception and danger where nothing is what it seems any longer, Samson undertakes his most dazzling mission yet one that leads him from the seeming innocence of rural Poland, to the dubious heart of civilization that is London Central. In the end, he has only himself to depend on, only hope to keep him from harm.

Charity

Bernard Samson returns to Berlin in the final novel in the classic spy trilogy, FAITH, HOPE and CharityBernard continues to chip away at the mystery of his sister in law Tessa Kosinski’s death in Berlin on the crucial night when his wife Fiona was brought out of the East. Fighting to uncover the truth, he must also confront the key relationships in his own life: Fiona is still far from stable now that she has returned to work, and their children remain in the clutches of his wealthy and manipulative father in law. Meanwhile, Werner Volkmann, Bernard s friend since childhood, is reluctant to get involved in Bernard s crusade.A wonderful depiction both of covert operations and office politics, Charity is packed with action, incident and intrigue, bringing to a triumphant conclusion a series of ten novels that represents one of the great acheivements of modern English fiction. This new reissue includes a foreword from the cover designer, Oscar winning filmmaker Arnold Schwartzman, and a brand new introduction by Len Deighton, which offers a fascinating insight into the writing of the story.

Only When I Laugh

‘Originally published in England in 1968, this early Deighton novel is set not in his familiar espionage milieu but in the world of international con artists. As caper novels go, it is entertaining, even cute at times, but it is far less than what Deighton fans expect from the author of such bestsellers as The Ipcress File, SS GB and Berlin Game. Told in alternating chapters by the three members of the con team, Silas, Liz and Bob, the book recounts the trio’s exploits, first in New York as they bilk a pair of businessmen and later in their London home base where they launch an ill fated scheme to sell phony arms to a small African nation. The repartee among the three is as much a part of plot as are the details of the ‘stings.’ Bob’s ambition to become the ringleader, as well as to separate Liz from Silas, leads to a final operation in Beirut.’ From Publishers Weekly:

Bomber

The classic novel of the Second World War that relates in devastating detail the 24 hour story of an allied bombing raid. Bomber is a novel war. There are no victors, no vanquished. There are simply those who remain alive, and those who die. Bomber follows the progress of an Allied air raid through a period of twenty four hours in the summer of 1943. It portrays all the participants in a terrifying drama, both in the air and on the ground, in Britain and in Germany. In its documentary style, it is unique. In its emotional power it is overwhelming. Len Deighton has been equally acclaimed as a novelist and as an historian. In Bomber he has combined both talents to produce a masterpiece.

SS-GB: Na*zi-Occupied Britain, 1941

For nine months Britain has been occupied a blitzed, depressed and dingy country. However, it’s business as usual at Scotland Yard run by the SS when Detective Inspector Archer is assigned to a routine murder case. Life must go on. But when SS Standartenfuhrer Huth arrives from Berlin with orders from the great Himmler himself to supervise the investigation, the resourceful Archer finds himself caught up in a high level, all action, espionage battle. This is a spy story quite different from any other. Only Deighton, with his flair for historical research and his narrative genius, could have written it.

XPD

It is 1979. A stolen World War II document kept secret since then is about to surface, propelling the most ruthless secret agents of Great Britain, America, Germany, and the Soviet Union into a desperate battle of wits and violence. Anyone who learns of the paper must die, his file stamped Expedient Demise, or…
XPD.

Goodbye, Mickey Mouse

In Goodbye Mickey Mouse Len Deighton has written his best novel yet: a brilliant, multi dimensional picture of what it is to be at war! and what it was to be in love in the England of 1944. Goodbye Mickey Mouse is Deighton’s fourteenth novel and a vivid evocation of wartime England, the story of a group of American fighter pilots flying escort missions over Germany in the winter of 1943 4. At the centre of the novel are two young men: the deeply reserved Captain Jamie Farebrother, estranged son of a deskbound colonel, and the cocky Lieutenant Mickey Morse, well on his way to becoming America’s Number One Flying Ace. Alike only in their courage, they forge a bond of friendship in battle with far reaching consequences for themselves, and for the future of those they love.

MAMista

As a group of Marxist revolutionaries in Spanish Guiana prepare to unseat their country’s leader, a group of high powered men in Washington prepare to keep the current government intact and capitalize on the small country’s newfound oil.

City of Gold

With 1942 Cairo under siege and at the mercy of General Erwin Rommel, British Captain Albert Cutler enters the city to locate the spy that his government is certain Rommel has placed there.

Violent Ward

If America is a lunatic asylum, then California is the Violent Ward. Mickey Murphy is a criminal lawyer with an office in LA’s downtown low rent district, an ex wife who bleeds him for money, clients who would plead the Fifth Amendment if they could count that high, and an unrequited passion for his wealthiest client’s wife. To make matters worse, Mickey finds himself embroiled against his wishes in an elaborate and clever scam that’s going askew, and being interrogated by the LAPD about a brutal murder. With an observant eye and ear for the California ‘scene’, Deighton once again uses his brilliant storytelling skills to propel an exciting and suspenseful narrative at breakneck speed to a dramatic climax in a riot torn city. This new reissue includes a foreword from the cover designer, Oscar winning filmmaker Arnold Schwartzman, and a brand new introduction by Len Deighton, which offers a fascinating insight into the writing of the story.

Action Cook Book

‘I am going to cook you the best meal you have ever tasted in your life!’ Harry Palmer to Sue Lloyd in ‘The Ipcress Files’ ‘Len was a great cook, a smashing cook. I learned a lot about food from playing Harry Palmer’ Michael Caine If you look carefully at Harry Palmer’s kitchen in the classic film ‘The Ipcress Files’ you will notice a newspaper pinned on the wall. This is one of Len Deighton’s classic cookstrips, the series that ran for two years when he was the Observer food writer. Because before he became famous as the thriller writer of his generation, Len Deighton had trained as a pastry chef. He was also a brilliant graphic artist his credits include the first ever UK cover for Kerouac’s ‘On The Road’. ‘The Action Cookbook’ is the perfect mix of these two passions, created for the hero of his third passion. ‘The Action Cook Book‘ was once an instructional book for the bachelor male a guide to sophisticated cooking for the would be Harry Palmer. It now has a great following as a fabulous piece of nostalgia as well as retaining real credibility as a genuinely useful cook book. If you need to create the basic wine cellar basic to Len Deighton decidedly aspirational to the rest of us, or to learn how to cook full bodied meals with a seductive touch how could you resist brain souffle? ‘brains are a very good constituent for a souffle. They are delicious fried, or in any of the piquant wine sauces’, then this is the book for you.

No Royalty A/C Action Cook Book

‘I am going to cook you the best meal you have ever tasted in your life!’ Harry Palmer to Sue Lloyd in ‘The Ipcress Files’ ‘Len was a great cook, a smashing cook. I learned a lot about food from playing Harry Palmer’ Michael Caine If you look carefully at Harry Palmer’s kitchen in the classic film ‘The Ipcress Files’ you will notice a newspaper pinned on the wall. This is one of Len Deighton’s classic cookstrips, the series that ran for two years when he was the Observer food writer. Because before he became famous as the thriller writer of his generation, Len Deighton had trained as a pastry chef. He was also a brilliant graphic artist his credits include the first ever UK cover for Kerouac’s ‘On The Road’. ‘The Action Cookbook’ is the perfect mix of these two passions, created for the hero of his third passion. ‘The Action Cook Book’ was once an instructional book for the bachelor male a guide to sophisticated cooking for the would be Harry Palmer. It now has a great following as a fabulous piece of nostalgia as well as retaining real credibility as a genuinely useful cook book. If you need to create the basic wine cellar basic to Len Deighton decidedly aspirational to the rest of us, or to learn how to cook full bodied meals with a seductive touch how could you resist brain souffle? ‘brains are a very good constituent for a souffle. They are delicious fried, or in any of the piquant wine sauces’, then this is the book for you.

Fighter

Len Deighton’s bestselling history of the Battle of Britain is generally regarded as the finest there is. Brilliant analysis…
provides a detailed account, fuller than any previously written. A.J.P. TaylorLen Deighton s skill as a novelist is used to show how the human factor influenced every twist and turn of this close fought battle. His encyclopedic knowledge of technology makes clear how machines played a vital role in the fight for Britain s survival. Here is the intensely vivid story of the men who developed radar, designed the high speed monoplanes, fought each other in the skies and those who simply engaged in vicious vendetta.

Blitzkrieg

An account of Hitler’s rise to power in a defeated, demoralized Germany analyzes the German Blitzkrieg campaign that led to the nearly fatal encirclement of British and French forces at Dunkirk.

Battle of Britain

The Wordsworth Military Library covers the breadth of military history, including studies of individual leaders and accounts of major campaigns and great conflicts.

Blood, Tears, and Folly

Despite the volumes written about World War II, many questions remain un answered. In this balanced and thoughtful chronicle, historian and World War II expert Len Deighton dares to explore intriguing questions, including why the British weren’t more prepared for the Blitz and why Hitler failed to thoroughly support his U boat program. He also warns that we haven’t yet learned the lessons of World War II, as ethnic cleansing, Middle East violence, and the widening gap between rich and poor still plague the world.

Great Flying Stories

H. G. Wells, Edgar Allan Poe, Richard Bach, Roald Dahl, Len Deighton and seven other famous writers explore the novelty, the adventure, and the skill of flying, in entertaining stories ranging from the fantastic to the factual.