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Len Deighton’s espionage books can be broadly classified into two categories—the ones that feature an anonymous British agent (Harry Palmer in the films) and the nine-book saga of Bernard Samson.
Len Deighton and the mundanity of spies For the spy novelist, espionage was not a thrilling solitary pursuit but an extension of the world we live in. I was sent to prevent the Bolshevik Revolution and to keep Russia in the war,” wrote Somerset Maugham in the preface to Ashenden, or the British Agent (1928). “The reader will know,” he continued drily, “that my efforts did not meet with success.” In 1915-16, already a successful novelist and playwright, Maugham worked as a British spy in Geneva after being recruited by an intelligence officer he met at a dinner arranged by his...