Len Deighton’s Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Spy

Len Deighton’s Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Spy was published in 1976. It has also been issued as Catch a Falling Spy.

Len Deighton (born 1929) made his reputation as a spy writer with his unnamed spy novels, starting with The Ipcress File in 1962. They’re often referred to as the Harry Palmer novels, Harry Palmer being the name given to the character in the movie adaptations starring Michael Caine.

How many of the unnamed spy novels there were is a controversial question. No-one disputes that The Ipcress File, Funeral in Berlin, Horse Under Water and Billion Dollar Brain belong to that series. It’s generally assumed that An Expensive Place To Die (1967) is another unnamed spy novel. There are those who believe that Spy Story (1974) is a sixth book in the series. It’s quite plausible that the protagonist of that novel is the unnamed spy, a few years older. It’s also possible, although slightly more controversial, that Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Spy is a seventh novel featuring the same protagonist. Deighton has always been somewhat cagey on the subject. The uncertainty about how many unnamed spy novels there were adds an extra touch of mystery which is quite fitting. A spy’s whole career is after all a series of deceptions and false identities. The protagonist of Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Spy generally behaves in a manner that is reasonably consistent with the theory that he’s the same man at a later stage of his career.

Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Spy starts in the Sahara Desert. The British spy who may or may not be the unnamed spy is working with CIA agent Major Mann. They have to meet a Soviet defector named Bekuv who is currently working as part of a Soviet scientific team in Mali.

The problems begin over the question of Bekuv’s wife. Bekuv has insisted that his wife be brought out of Russia to join him, but the CIA doesn’t have Mrs Bekuv. They tell Bekuv that she’s going to join him soon.

Bekuv has been working on masers but what he really cares about is extraterrestrials. He wants to contact them. He’s not a UFO nut. He seriously believes that contact with alien civilisations is possible. What Bekuv wants is money to work on his project for contacting these alien civilisations.

The CIA and the British Secret Service don’t care about masers or aliens. What they want is to plug a massive American security leak. Top secret scientific data is being obtained by the Soviets. The CIA and the British Secret Service believe that Bekuv can help to identify the source of the leak. From the beginning there is tension between Bekuv and the CIA. The CIA is undoubtedly lying to Bekuv, and he’s undoubtedly lying to them. He has an agenda, they have an agenda, and those agendas are hardly compatible. Getting the information they need from Bekuv is going to be a laborious process. Maybe he’ll be more co-operative when his wife joins him. But the arrival of his wife makes things much more complicated.

An added complication for the unnamed spy is Red Bancroft. She’s a beautiful American woman, a friend of Mann and Mann’s wife Bessie. What her involvement in the whole situation is not at all clear. What is clear is that the unnamed spy has fallen in love with her.

There are endless betrayals, and everyone involved seems to have a different agenda. The CIA is very interested in the 1924 Society, a group of scientists interested in extraterrestrials which may or may not be a KGB front. There’s also a high-powered Senate scientific committee, which could be the source of the leaks. Of course it’s also possible that the security leak comes from within the CIA.

Somebody is trying to kill Bekuv. It might be the KGB, or somebody else. There’s also the problem of Harry Dean, an old CIA buddy of Mann’s whose career ended under a cloud. He might be a double agent, or the KGB could be trying to frame him, or someone else could be trying to frame him. Then there’s Harry Dean’s ex-wife, who isn’t really his ex-wife, and her new husband who isn’t really her husband. They’re all mixed up in this operation.

Mann and the unnamed spy have a tense relationship made more tense by misunderstandings and personal feelings. They don’t hate each other. Maybe in some ways they like each other. They don’t trust each other. But nobody trusts anybody in this case.

The web of deceptions and tangled loyalties and betrayals and suspicions grows ever more complex.

The action takes place in the Algerian desert, in rural Virginia, in Washington, in Miami and in Ireland.

This is one of Deighton’s lesser known novels and you could make a good case that it’s unjustly neglected. It’s actually Deighton in top form. The betrayals are both professional and personal, with the personal factors being emphasised a bit more than in Deighton’s earlier books.

Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Spy is highly recommended.

thoughts on John le Carré

Given that I posted my review of his first novel, Call for the Dead, just a few days ago and he has now passed away I should say something about John le Carré. And maybe something about modern spy fiction.

He’s not my favourite spy writer and I don’t think he was quite as ground-breaking as he was sometimes made out to be. Moral ambiguity, pessimism, the psychology of the spy and the madness of the spy game had already been explored by writers like Graham Greene and Eric Ambler. I did think however that when it came to depicting the utter deadening futility of the whole enterprise le Carré had few if any peers.

While his most admired works were The Spy Who Came in From the Cold and Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy (and they were rightly admired) I personally think his masterpiece was The Looking Glass War, published in 1965. It concerns a bunch of British spies whose glory days were World War 2 and they have never really moved on. Unfortunately they’re still running a department of the British Secret Service and when they try to pull off an ambitious operation it goes horribly, tragi-comically wrong. A great book.

His name always seemed to be linked with that of Len Deighton although I think they were really very different writers. There’s something rather tragic about le Carré’s most enduring character, George Smiley, a brilliant spy with a very subtle mind whose personal life is one long exercise in futility. And to some extent you could say the same about his professional career as a spy master. Deighton’s unnamed spy, created at almost precisely the same time, is sometimes left wondering why he bothers but there’s nothing tragic about him. He’s the sort of guy who will do OK. He’s a survivor. Deighton is ironic and cynical. Le Carré can be pretty cynical as well but le Carré still believed that the British, however incompetent they might be, were the good guys and the Russians were the bad guys. Deighton on the other hand always seems to be having fun and seems to regard life with amused but tolerant cynicism.

Le Carré and Deighton can both be seen as belonging to the gritty realist cynical school of British spy fiction and in the 60s and 70s they were certainly the two giants in that field.

I’ve reviewed all the volumes of le Carré’s Karla trilogy - Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy, The Honourable Schoolboy and Smiley’s People as well as The Looking Glass War.

And, as points of comparison, I’ve reviewed Deighton’s Horse Under Water, Billion Dollar Brain, An Expensive Place To Die and and Spy Story as well as Greene’s Our Man in Havana and Stamboul Train and Ambler’s Uncommon Danger and Judgment on Deltchev.

I should add that I've also reviewed the excellent BBC TV adaptation of Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy and their TV version of Smiley's People.

Len Deighton’s Spy Story

Spy Story is a 1974 spy thriller by Len Deighton. The first-person narrator is Patrick Armstrong, a man who works at the Studies Centre in London. Patrick and Ferdy Foxwell have just returned from one of their cruises, on a British nuclear submarine collecting intelligence on the activities of the Soviet Navy. The Studies Centre then uses this data to play war-games. The sort of ultra-sophisticated war-games using computer assistance that both the western and Eastern bloc militaries would play to figure out how to destroy each other in the event of all-out war. The Studies Centre is a kind of quasi-official offshoot of the intelligence community. Which makes Patrick Armstrong not quite an intelligence officer but kind of vaguely in that sort of field.

The first question that is going to occur to any Len Deighton fan reading this book is - is Patrick Armstrong actually the unnamed spy of Deighton’s first five spy novels (the unnamed spy who became Harry Palmer in the film adaptations)? Deighton has stated that he isn’t but he has done so in terms that actually suggest very strongly that he might very well be the same man. In fact the internal evidence of the novel pretty strongly suggests that he is the unnamed spy, a few years older and now retired from the Secret Service. One thing we know for certain about him is that his name is definitely not Patrick Armstrong, and that he definitely was a spy, working for the very same branch of the Secret Service that the unnamed spy worked for. And his former boss was Dawlish, the unnamed spy’s boss. We also know that he has no intention of going back to being a spy, and given that the unnamed spy was not exactly enthusiastic about being a spy that also seems consistent with his being the same man.

Patrick Armstrong has stumbled upon something rather interesting. His old flat is full of the same photos that were always there, photos of himself with various other people. The photos are exactly the same, but his face has been replaced by someone else’s.

Other disquieting things happen. Like having his home raided by Russian security personnel (not what you expect to happen in London) led by none other than his old adversary Colonel Stok. There’s also an accident that might or might not be an attempt on the life of a British MP. And a witness to the accident whose story doesn’t add up at all.

The very last thing that Patrick Armstrong wants is to be drawn back into the murky world of espionage and counter-espionage but he has the uncomfortable feeling that that is exactly what might happen to him if he’s not careful.

What’s happening is that someone has come up with a very clever plan. And there’s nothing Pat Armstrong likes less than people who come up with very clever plans. It always ends in tears before bedtime.

And there’s no way of knowing whose very clever plan this is. It might have been Dawlish who came up with it. Or Colonel Schlegel, the ex-US Marine flyer now in charge of Studies Centre. Or some fool at the Foreign Office. Or some fool at the CIA. It might have been Colonel Stok. It might have been some other hare-brained genius. There’s also no way for Pat to know what this clever plan actually consists of. He just knows that he doesn’t like it. And when he starts to get an inkling of what might be involved he likes it even less.

It ends up with Pat and Ferdy and Colonel Schlegel on a US nuclear submarine making its way under the Arctic ice, a dangerous undertaking at the best of times but much more dangerous this time because the submarine is just a counter in someone’s strategic war game and it’s an expendable counter. It’s on an insanely dangerous course which would not in normal circumstances even be contemplated. The sea is too shallow, the ice above is too thick, the margin for error is non-existent. And to make things even more delightfully suicidal, there are those East German submarines. Plus the entire Russian Northern Fleet. All of which is guaranteed to produce some suitably nail-biting excitement.

This is typical Deighton in its extreme cynicism. It’s not just that both sides are equally cold-blooded and ruthless. There are multiple players in this game and some of them are crazy. Maybe all of them are crazy. There’s also Deighton’s trademark sardonic wit.

Spy Story is perhaps not quite top-tier Deighton but it’s still fairly entertaining. Recommended.

Len Deighton’s An Expensive Place To Die

An Expensive Place To Die was the fifth and final installment of Len Deighton’s unnamed spy series (sometimes referred to as the Harry Palmer novels since that was the name he was given in the film adaptations). There are a few subtle differences between this 1967 novel and the other unnamed spy books.

The protagonist/narrator is a British spy living in Paris. His latest mission is to deliver U.S. atomic secrets to a certain M. Datt. It might be an odd assignment but he has discovered that it’s best not to try to understand the minds of his superiors.

M. Datt runs a psychiatric clinic in Paris. It’s also a brothel and possibly a gambling club. It might also be a front for espionage. Or it might be an operation by the French security services. It might even be a private project run by M. Datt for his own inscrutable purposes (possibly including blackmail). What is certain is that M. Datt has compiled dossiers on some very powerful and important men. With film footage to accompany the dossiers. 

Another man is very interested in this case - Chief Inspector Loiseau of the Sûreté Nationale. Our unnamed protagonist is not exactly working with Loiseau and not exactly working against him.

Also involved is Loiseau’s ex-wife Maria. She takes a shine to our unnamed protagonist but she also has some mysterious link with Datt. There’s an American nuclear scientist mixed up in this as well, and a Red Chinese nuclear scientist to boot. 

As one expects from Deighton the plotting is complex and devious, and the characters are ambiguous and very devious indeed. There’s a good deal of double-crossing and even triple-crossing going on. 

The four earlier unnamed spy novels used first person narration but this time for some reason Deighton occasionally switches to third person narration.

There has been some mild controversy as to whether An Expensive Place To Die really is part of the unnamed spy cycle. There’s nothing in the book to answer the question one way or another. The character is certainly very similar but with perhaps a few minor differences - he seems slightly less fussy although he’s still somewhat insubordinate. Len Deighton has stated that this is the fifth unnamed spy novel so that’s good enough for me, although it appears that at the time of publication he wanted to leave the matter just a little ambiguous.

I would not rate this book quite as highly as its predecessors. It doesn’t seem to have quite the same wit and sparkle. Perhaps Deighton was simply moving towards a different style. It does still have the cynicism we expect, and the delightfully intricate plotting.

An Expensive Place To Die is still a fine example of the Cold War spy novel. Highly recommended, although I’d read the earlier the earlier books in the cycle first.

Len Deighton’s Billion Dollar Brain

Billion Dollar Brain was the fourth of Len Deighton’s spy novels featuring an unnamed agent of a British intelligence service. When the novels were filmed in the 1960s the character was given the name Harry Palmer.

Deighton’s novels are in many ways the antithesis of the James Bond novels. Deighton’s spy is working class, wears glasses and lives in a slightly seedy flat. Unlike Bond he is less than enthusiastic about being a spy, and even less enthusiastic about obeying orders. He is on the other hand an excellent cook and quite the gourmet and despite his slightly down-at-heel appearances he is by no means a mere thug, nor is he a bungler or a fool. He is something of a closet intellectual and can quote Virgil if the occasion demands it (as it does in his novel). It’s probably fair to say that he is quite a bit like Deighton himself.

Deighton’s hero may not be enthusiastic about his work but he is a thorough professional and has no patience whatsoever with amateurs. When things go wrong, as they frequently do, it is usually because he has not been given all the information he needs or because he has been set up by his superiors by mysterious purposes of their own.

Deighton and John le Carré were seen in the 1960s as ushering in a new era in spy fiction, cynical and realistic and in stark contrast to the glamour of James Bond. Which makes Billion Dollar Brain rather surprising. The plot for this novel is at times outlandish and completely over-the-top - in fact it could quite easily have formed the basis for a Bond film. Convoluted and deceptive plotting was one of the hallmarks of Deighton’s spy fiction right from the start but in this novel the plotting becomes quite spectacularly baroque. As is often the the case with Deighton though, just as you think you know where the plot is going it goes somewhere else entirely.

It all starts out as a very routine case involving a troublesome left-wing Finnish journalist. In Helsinki Deighton’s anonymous spy stumbles upon what proves to be a vast private anti-communist intelligence operation run by a fabulously wealthy American billionaire, General Midwinter. Midwinter’s ambitions go well beyond mere intelligence-gathering and propaganda. He seems to be intending to overthrow the Soviet Union single-handedly. To carry out his ambitious plans he has had a computer built from him. Not just a computer, but a super-computer, a computer capable of running intelligence operations on its own.

The central character in the novel is not really the unnamed narrator but his old friend Harvey Newbegin. Newbegin is an American and to say that his loyalties are uncertain would be putting it mildly. Harvey used to be a professional American spy but now he works for General Midwinter’s organisation. Harvey is however a man to whom duplicity and betrayal are second nature. He thinks he is clever enough to play off his new employer against the Russians while betraying both parties. It’s a dangerous game and while he is a skillful manipulator it’s obvious that sooner or later he’s going to land himself in very deep trouble, and then he expects that his old friend in British intelligence will come to his rescue.

His old friend in British intelligence has his own problems and while he has a certain affection for Newbegin there are limits to his patience. 

Complicating matters further is Newbegin’s girlfriend Signe, who is playing her own game and who proves to be just as skillful at manipulation.

Deighton’s approach might be deliberately unheroic but he certainly has style and his prose is sardonic and drily humorous, and a good deal more entertaining than le Carré’s. Deighton also has the ability to construct plots of byzantine complexity without becoming tedious, and without becoming impossibly obscure. His plots twist and turn in spectacular fashion but while his protagonists are often hopelessly unaware of what is really going on he is careful to ensure that the reader is not left in similar confusion. Deighton’s plots might be convoluted but they do make sense.

Billion Dollar Brain is a complex, intelligent, stylish and thoroughly entertaining spy novel. Highly recommended.

Len Deighton’s Horse Under Water

Horse Under Water, published in 1963, was Len Deighton’s second novel and also the second of the four novels that are usually thought of as the Harry Palmer novels, that being the name given to Deighton’s hero (played by Michael Caine) in the film adaptations. In the books the hero remains nameless.

Deighton and John Le Carré are usually considered to have been the originators of a new breed of dark, realistic and cynical spy novels. While Le Carré is the better known of the two today Deighton was at least as good and his novels are essential reading for any self-respecting fan of espionage fiction.

The labyrinthine plot twists of Horse Under Water are typically Deighton. His unnamed spy is sent on a mission about which he has serious misgivings but the purpose of the mission is not what he thinks it is. It is also not what his boss Dawlish thinks it is. In fact nobody seems to be entirely clear about what the mission is really about. Spies are after all as much cogs in the machines of politics and bureaucracy as any other civil servants, and no civil servant expects the decisions of politicians and bureaucrats to make any real sense.

Initially the idea is to retrieve a cache of counterfeit money from a German U-boat that sank off the Portuguese coast in 1945. The Nazis had printed huge amounts of remarkably good counterfeit money, their intention being to use it to destabilise the currencies of the Allies. Now some genius in the Foreign Office has decided it would be a very clever idea to  use this counterfeit money to pay Portuguese revolutionaries. That way the British government could gain some influence over the revolutionaries if they succeed in toppling the Portuguese government while at the same time not ending up out of pocket if the revolutionaries fail.

Our hero is sent off to do a Royal Navy diving course and is then off to Portugal to take charge of the operation and of a motley collection of individuals who are supposed to assist him. None of whom he trusts. Finding the sunken U-boat is easy enough. But our hero makes some other discoveries as well, discoveries that lead him to suspect that nothing about this operation is what it seems to be. And just as he starts to work out what might be going on he finds that there are further wheels within wheels and further layers of duplicity to unravel.

Deighton’s hero does not have the luxury of having someone like Q to fit him out with all sorts of high-tech gadgetry. He works for the real British government of the 1960s, cash-strapped and penny-pinching. He isn’t even issued a gun although Dawlish does hint in a roundabout way that if he were to take his own gun a blind eye would be turned, on the assumption of course that he is careful not to use it. That’s par for the course although our hero does think it’s a bit much that he has to fork out his own money for the diving gear he will need. He’ll get his money back, on the assumption of course that he will be able to return it to the Royal Navy diving school in undamaged condition.

There are several potential villains, none of whom turn out to be what they seemed to be. The potential villains on the spot in Portugal are worrying enough but there are also political strings being pulled back in London. There seem to be an awful lot of people with an interest in that sunken U-boat. In fact the interest in the U-boat strikes the unnamed spy  as being very curious. Why would so many people be interested in a totally obsolete submarine that has been sitting on the sea bed since 1945? It’s a relic from a war that has been over for almost twenty years. What secrets could it possibly contain that would be relevant now?

This is spy fiction of a very different kind from James Bond. There’s relatively little action and when acts of violence do occur they come unexpectedly. That’s not to say that it’s dull. There’s plenty of tension and plenty of suspense as the plot twists and turns. There’s danger, but it’s a brooding menacing kind of danger, it’s danger that can take the characters (and the book’s readers) off their guard.

Deighton was slightly unusual in that he didn’t always stick to the Cold War themes that were usual in 1963. In a 1960s Deighton spy novel enemies were not always found in the expected places. Spies are not always set to watch enemies; sometimes friends need even closer watching.

Deighton’s style suits his subject matter. It’s unheroic, often matter-of-fact, and occasionally humorous (in a black sort of way). His world of espionage is entirely lacking in  glamour and also in passion. People sometimes get killed but no-one gets emotional about it. As his hero explains to his girlfriend (who works for the same intelligence agency) there is no room for vendettas or for emotional feelings about the job in this world. If an agent gets killed that’s just part of the job. Deighton’s genius is that he could make this very unglamorous world so fascinating.

Horse Under Water is superior spy fiction from one of the masters. Highly recommended.