The 3rd in the Bernard Samson Books.

Bernie Samson, que trabaja en el departamento de asuntos alemanes del Servicio Secreto Británico, está casado con Fiona, quien antes de desertar de la Unión Soviética también era agente de los ingleses. Un inquietante cuestión de espionaje internacional y una negociación de intercambio de agentes capturados se mezclan en la novela con un aspecto de la vida íntima de Bernie: éste y Fiona se entrevistan para decidir quién se hará cargo de la custodia de sus hijos, que ella quiere que vayan a vivir a la Unión Soviética, y de este modo los problemas humanos añaden un peculiar dramatismo a las maniobras sin piedad de los servicios de espionaje, dando origen a un verdadero clásico del género que ha sido objeto de una adaptación para la televisión británica.

The final book in the Game Set & Match trilogy, in which Bernard Samson helps capture a KGB courier using information from former KGB major Erich Stinnes – whom Samson convinced to defect in the previous book. But the courier’s confession implies that there is another KGB mole in London Central – which is bad news for Samson, whose loyalty has been questioned since his wife turned out to be a KGB mole herself. Now he must find out who the mole is – or if the courier is lying. Deighton delivers a very good spy yarn that makes the most of the chief problem of the espionage business: never knowing for sure just who is on whose side, and who is telling the truth. London Match gets a bit too bogged down by the domestic lives of the characters – everyone seems to be having affairs with someone else and expecting Bernard to deal with it – and it gets a little tedious for the likes of me. But the twists and turns of the espionage angle more than make up for it. ( )

The trilogy - Berlin Game, Mexico Set, & London Match were first published in 1983 - 1985, only a generation ago, but they seem dated when read today. Apart from the obvious changes in technology - no mobile phones and no PCs - it is the smoking, the incessant drinking and the sexism that seem out of place.
Deighton's writing style seems more screenplay than novel. Just as a movie is often a distillation of the original novel, these books seem spare to a fault - nothing is included that is not needed for the plot. For example, when the hero's wife defects and leaves him with the children, the kids are not meetings for the next 100-odd pages, when their existence becomes important to the plot as a bargaining point.
I think that all Cold War era spy novels are inevitably compared with Le Carre books, and you can see the influence here. Deighton ties hard to be cerebral rather action-driven, but fails to be as convincing as Le Carre. But, interestingly, I found the flaws to lie in the action parts of the writing - the southeast seems comically inept, the spies drinking gallons of hard booze before, during and after field operations; the fact that there seems to be only 5 spores in MI6 etc etc.
But while there are minor quibbles, I enjoyed my trip back in time with Deighton and found the books hard to put down.
Read November 2013. ( )

The third book in the trilogy, is one is probably the most suspenseful. It is also the one in which the hero is the most conflicted. He is finally dealing with the betrayal of his wife on two levels. Her betrayal of her country and values, and her betrayal of him. Like most spy novels, Samson finds solace for the personal betrayal in the arms of a much younger woman, a affair for which he has very ambivalent feelings, and not a little guilt. The other betrayal, of the Company and the Western values, he finds much harder to deal with, and his confusion about, and emotional ties to, various bumbling bureaucrats in charge causes as much confusion in his life as has the defection of his wife.

This series of spy novels is unusual in that, most of the action is the emotional reactions, and actions, of the hero, Bernard Samson, and not in the maneuverings and politics, although there is plenty of that, of the spy world. This won't be my last Len Deighton novel.

I read these books because they have been reissued in digital format for the Nook. (the Barnes & Noble e-reader) Issuing these in this format should open up these stories to a whole new audience of readers. I hope they enjoy them as much as I did. ( )