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Wednesday, 5 December 2012

Advent 5

Berlin Game - Len Deighton

The great sadness of the fall of the Berlin Wall is that there is no call now for the old-fashioned spy thriller, in which all the protagonists are grubby and compromised.

This is an exemplar of the genre by a most professional and skilled writer.

The competence of the writing is not the only aspect of this book which appeals. No, I have vivid memories of the time when I read it - I was not, as they say, in a good place and this was a pleasing distraction.

 
'How long have we been sitting here?' I said. I picked up the field glasses and studied the bored young American soldier in his glass-sided box.
'Nearly a quarter of a century,' said Werner Volkman.

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