Berlin Game - review

Berlin Game by Len Deighton

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


I read Berlin Game almost twenty years ago, then again a few years later. That was in a time when authors didn't sport multiple black belts and 10 years in MI6 or CIA. Since then I've read all 9 books in the triple trilogy only Deighton could pull off. Deighton writes at a sedate pace, drawing you into the personal and work life of the protagonist to create an immediate emotional connection. Bernard Samson was a former MI6 field agent sent back into the field to Germany, the land of his birth. His job was to bring in Brahms 4 to cross to the British. Samson's character is finely drawn as a son of a war hero, a public school man married to a wealthy fellow agent. Two kids and a gorgeous nanny complete the triangle very nicely. The hero's buddy, Werner, is perfectly cast as the out of shape hen-pecked slob. The two set off on an adventure to get through the Berlin Wall with an inevitable drama of the possibility that they wont make it back to the West. Communist baddies, starchy old British characters, agents sans all the gadgets and a great post war view into the hearts and minds of the British and German people.



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