Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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16 of 16 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Bits and Pieces, Odds and Ends, October 20, 2000
I first read this book as a teenager in the 1960s, graduating from James Bond. After Fleming's action-based thrillers, Deighton was bound to come across as a little elliptical, and my response then was a mixture of bafflement and admiration. I had to read the three subsequent books in the series before I realized that it's a waste of time looking for logical plots in Deighton's work. Perfect plotters are authors who are never diverted by inconsequential things. But Deighton's writing is fuelled by the inconsequential and the peculiar.George Orwell once noted that Dickens's books are always packed with purposeless detail. Cheeses can't be just "cheeses": they have to be "Gloucester cheeses". His fictional world is very particular, very specific. In the same way, when you get to know Deighton, you are not surprised when his hero stops off at a delicatessen to buy a pound of - no, not just "butter", but "Normandy butter" - and when it goes soft in his pocket before he makes it home, we realize that this hero is a million miles from James Bond. Departing from the usual profile, Deighton's novels are character-based rather than action-based, and that's both a strength and a weakness. There are any number of slick, factory-produced thrillers around, but a Len Deighton thriller is a hand-made product. The edges are not quite straight, it wobbles when you try to stand it upright, and the doors don't quite fit. Those who look for a perfect solution to a clearly-stated puzzle should look elsewhere. What we get from Len Deighton is the kind of character-drawing that is traditionally the weakest element in popular thrillers. His descriptions are always arresting and invariably witty. Colonel Ross is described as having "the complexion of a Hovis loaf", and those who have seen a Hovis loaf will recognize the aptness of the image: that of a florid military type who is a little too fond of the bottle. He is also described as a gentleman - which Deighton defines as someone who never drinks gin before 7.30 p.m. and wouldn't hit a lady without first taking his hat off. If you like that sort of thing, you'll like Len Deighton. He is the Charles Dickens of thriller writers, with the same faults and the same virtues. And The Ipcress File is replete with both. Deighton's shaky and approximate plotting is more than offset by his observant eye for the endless varieties of human strangeness. Just one thing, though. Deighton is someone who doesn't just write, he re-writes. The care with which he crafts his prose is somehow evident on the page in the look of the sentences and paragraphs. He is a writer, and you should be a reader. So, my advice: forget the cassette. Go for the book.
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8 of 10 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Deighton's Debut, November 3, 2005
This review is from: The Ipcress File (Mass Market Paperback)
It is said that this debut from Deighton transformed the thriller genre, and after reading its elliptical not-plot, one can see why. This first in the so-called "Harry Palmer" quartet (the narrator isn't named in print, only in the films based on the books), firmly established the idea of spy as bureaucrat, rather than spy as action hero. The narrator is a sardonic, apparently middle-class, man who has been transferred into an awkwardly acronymed small department of the British espionage system, which is run by proper upper-class gents. There, his first assignment is to assist in the investigation of the mysterious disappearance of a number of British scientists. His problem is that information is so compartmentalized that he's never really clear what's going on or how to even begin.
Most readers are likely to be equally confused as they try to unravel the tangled web of bureaucratic infighting that seems to shroud the whole book. It doesn't help matters when the scene shifts to Lebanon, where the narrator and his support team is involved in retrieving one of the scientists. The plot (such as it is) gets further confused when the boss goes off on assignment, leaving the narrator in charge of the section. And then the boss comes back out of the blue and they all troop off to a South Pacific atoll to witness some kind of American nuclear test. It's hard to see where Deighton's going with all this, and even more so when it becomes apparent that the narrator is actually under suspicion of being a Soviet spy.
In the end, Deighton waves his wand and removes his handkerchief to reveal the solution to all the confusion, and while it more or less works, it somehow feels cheap. There's even a whole "explanation" scene where the narrator spells everything out to another character for the reader's benefit. The research into the espionage bureaucracy of the era is admirable, and Deighton does have a deft hand at description and some nice turns of phrase, but the plotting is so skimpy as to be noticeable in its absence. It's kind of interesting to read about spies as regular bureaucrats with expense account issues and bag wages owed to them, but that only gets one so far. In the end, for all the groundbreaking style, the "threat" to the
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5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Still one of the best, March 2, 2002
This review is from: The Ipcress File (Mass Market Paperback)
This was at the beginning of cold war spy stories with double-crosses and double double crosses and moles, and was one of the first to inject humor. We had already had some of Le Carre, and James Bond and Our Man in Havana. I just re-read it after forty years and it still seems fresh and original. My copy has the price tag of 60 cents.
The plot is so ingenious that it's difficult to follow, and there's a long explanation at the end which still leaves a few loose ends if you want to pick nits. It goes fom London to the Lebanon, to a Pacific island and to Hungary (maybe) but the fact that it's first person narrative helps to keep the flow smooth. Later on I think Deighton grew repetitious, and even repeated some of his jokes.
Does anyone know Palmer's military rank? He gets addressed as Colonel at one point.
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Most Recent Customer Reviews
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5.0 out of 5 stars
A debut with impact on the genre
The movie inspired by Len Deighton (LD)'s The Ipcress File (TIF), first published in 1962, starred a very young Michael Caine as the nameless hero, who is modelled to some extent...
Published 5 months ago by P. A. Doornbos
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5.0 out of 5 stars
More realistic than Bond
Reading this book after any of Ian Fleming's was an example of the notional shock to the system. Fleming's James Bond was a field agent and not just any field agent, mind you.
Published 8 months ago by Jersey Kid
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5.0 out of 5 stars
"It's a confusing story. I'm in a very confusing business."
Deighton's debut is a decidedly sardonic (but not jokey) spy tale that delivers wit and action even while whole sections of it are simply incomprehensible.
Published 11 months ago by EddieLove
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4.0 out of 5 stars
A nice read
While now being somewhat outdated, I really enjoy his brand o espionage. Deighton's mastery of dialogue is apparent, along with his ability to make the reader feel a part of the...
Published on November 6, 2005 by Highlanderthal
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3.0 out of 5 stars
The Ipcress File
The Ipcress File is an uneven, although occasionally fascinating adventure concerning nuclear weapons and thought reform.
Published on January 5, 2002
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5.0 out of 5 stars
The poet of the Spy story.
As "The Sunday Times" first branded Len Deighton when this book came out, he is indeed the poet of the spy story.
Published on January 13, 2001 by Robert Steele
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4.0 out of 5 stars
An alternative look at cold war thrillers
Anyone with intelligence and patience will find a lot to admire here. Where Fleming saw spies as glamorous adventurers and Le Carre as sinistre geniuses, Deighton envisages...
Published on August 24, 1998 by R. Cornell
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4.0 out of 5 stars
The IPCRESS file
The story appears at first to be fragmented; it becomes hard for the reader to fully grasp the plot.
Published on August 3, 1998
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5.0 out of 5 stars
Still a lovely spy book
Another dissent from the "1" rating below; Len Deighton's first four books (this one, Funeral in Berlin, The Billion Dollar Brain, An Expensive Place to Die) are all...
Published on January 26, 1998 by dridgway@mail.gcccd.cc.ca.us
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4.0 out of 5 stars
An excellent Cold War espionage novel.
I couldn't disagree more with the review here that states that this is a terrible book. Len Deighton is quite rightly considered one of the masters of the espionage novel.
Published on July 1, 1997
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by LEN DEIGHTON
by Len Deighton
by Len Deighton
by Len Deighton
