Deighton, Len. Berlin Game. Pushkin Publications, 2023.
Reason read: The National Security Act of 1947 was signed in July, but most of the provisions went into effect on September 18th.
Len Deighton’s Berlin Game is the first book in the Game, Set, Match trilogy which is part of two other trilogies, Hook, Line, Sinker and Faith, Hope, Charity. In Berlin Game, Bernard Sampson is a married father who works for the secret intelligence service in London, the M16. His wife also serves as an agent, but she outranks Bernard which does not seem to bother him.
Bernard has had a desk job for years, but when Brahms Four, a British agent behind the Iron Curtain (obviously, Berlin Game takes place back with there was an East and West Germany) asks to be rescued by Bernard he cannot say no. Brahms saved his life twenty years earlier and now Bernard must return the favor. What follows is a new game of cat and mouse where everyone could be a traitor, including his own wife. Deighton lines up the suspects, each one more likelier than the last. It’s a fast moving drama, perfect for the big screen.
Confessional: I thought the ending was a little too predictable.
Author fact: Len Deighton was born on February 18th, 1929. He died earlier this year.
Book trivia: Berlin Game is the first book in the Game Set Match trilogy.
Audio book trivia: Berlin Game was read by James Lailey. Confessional: I thought his accents were terrible. I couldn’t tell if a character was German or Russian. I switched to the book format after a while.
Music: Schubert’s “Death and the Maiden,” Haydn’s Seventy-Seven C Major, and “the Trout.”
BookLust Twist: from Book Lust twice. First, in the chapter called “Cold War Spy Fiction” (p 61) and again in the chapter called, get ready, “Spies and Spymasters: the Really Real Unreal World of Intelligence” (p 223).
~*LunaSea*~ 