I finished reading the book this morning. Lots of characters to keep track of. A decent espionage tale. Lots of British places and things to check out. Most of them easy enough to figure out by the wording around them, for example: Braces must be suspenders. I really enjoyed the metaphors the author uses - he had a good sense of humor. I chuckled at his descreet ways of letting us know our main character went to bed with his lady assistant, that he kissed her, and that she hinted she would like another such night with him. Sexy by suggestion. I felt bad for some of the nicer characters and I felt good that our main character at the end was good to those who had been good to him and who were still alive for him to repay their kindnesses.
A James Bond kind of a book. If you like James Bond movies you will enjoy this book - or at least will understand what is going on - sort of.
B, you are CORRECT! There are lots of characters to keep track of. I was SO confused by the first 150 pages, then things started to happen and finally some explanation of who was who and who were the moles, etc, etc.
I liked the lead character, he was rather snide and sarcastic. I got waylaid by all the places though. I guess being a Brit would help you to know where things were.
Some comments Chapter 1 - "ritual murder on a cream pastry". Ha ha.
Chapter 2 - "flirting across the mozzarella". another ha ha.
Chapter 5 - I read this about 3 times and did he burn papers in the back seat of the car? How do you do that?
Chapter 21 - Dalby "let the technicians conclude opinions from their data, where others would try to understand the techniques in order to jealously guard the privilege of deciding anything at all". I have had some really good bosses and some really bad ones. One of the favorable traits of the good ones was respecting your understanding of a problem and taking your word for the best decision. RATHER than spending HOURS of yours and their time trying to get them to understand so THEY could make the decision. I totally like Dalby's take on this.
Chapter 21 - the "insects came to do battle with the resources of the American chemical industries". Nicely put.
I was SO blown away by the location of the prison! And kept wondering what was the Ipcress file. Finally the end reveals all.
And Barb, I too, liked the lost earring and how the old man jailer was repaid.
First of all, my ILL book is a leather-bound copy with gold-edged pages that looks brand-spanking new. Since I couldn't bear to dog-ear the pages and didn't have sticky notes available, I have no quotes or specific spots to mention.
I wasn't sure from B and J's comments if I would like this book, but I did. Well, except for the brainwashing section. I didn't have any trouble with the characters, actually.
Having been to London several times, I had some idea about some of the places mentioned. And, honestly, I don't get too upset when I don't know a place in a book. I just skip over it.
And B, I'm not sure I would have picked up on the significance of the lost earing if I hadn't read your comment first. Yes, I am that dense.
B- and the metaphors! I only got about 3/4s of them.
J- for burning the papers in the back seat- maybe he held on to a corner until it was mostly burnt up and then put the last little bit in the ashtray to burn? That's the only thing I could come up with.
Did anyone else guess it was Dalby? That was my guess early on and I kept smacking my head whenever he talked to Dalby. Do you think Alice knew or suspected. She made that comment about him giving away his weaknesses to people he shouldn't...
I do love a good Cold War thriller but this one just didn't do it for me. In reading some other reviews of the book I found that Deighton said that he asked too much of the reader in this, his first book. I would agree, because there seemed to be so much that "Harry" knew that the reader didn't, and that's where most of my confusion came from.
I really struggled with the phone/office 4-way conversation in Chapter 17.
For the first 10 chapters or so I read the horoscopes at the beginning of each chapter diligently but for the life of me I couldn't conntect them to the events in the story. Now it strikes me that perhaps they were a way of sending coded messages to an agent in the field? Since they were posting classifieds to Dalby, could the horoscope have been Alice talking to Harry? Or Dalby to Jay? Or Ross to the EMP?
At the end, why/how was Dalby out of jail to crash a car? And Jay works for them now? WTH?
I did like Alice and Jean, too bad they were always deploying their brain power in the background.
I might give Deighton another try, I hear his later books are better, but overall I think I prefer Kenn Follett or Alistair MacLean.
7 comments:
I finished reading the book this morning. Lots of characters to keep track of. A decent espionage tale. Lots of British places and things to check out. Most of them easy enough to figure out by the wording around them, for example: Braces must be suspenders. I really enjoyed the metaphors the author uses - he had a good sense of humor. I chuckled at his descreet ways of letting us know our main character went to bed with his lady assistant, that he kissed her, and that she hinted she would like another such night with him. Sexy by suggestion. I felt bad for some of the nicer characters and I felt good that our main character at the end was good to those who had been good to him and who were still alive for him to repay their kindnesses.
A James Bond kind of a book. If you like James Bond movies you will enjoy this book - or at least will understand what is going on - sort of.
B, you are CORRECT! There are lots of characters to keep track of. I was SO confused by the first 150 pages, then things started to happen and finally some explanation of who was who and who were the moles, etc, etc.
I liked the lead character, he was rather snide and sarcastic. I got waylaid by all the places though. I guess being a Brit would help you to know where things were.
Some comments
Chapter 1 - "ritual murder on a cream pastry". Ha ha.
Chapter 2 - "flirting across the mozzarella". another ha ha.
Chapter 5 - I read this about 3 times and did he burn papers in the back seat of the car? How do you do that?
Chapter 21 - Dalby "let the technicians conclude opinions from their data, where others would try to understand the techniques in order to jealously guard the privilege of deciding anything at all". I have had some really good bosses and some really bad ones. One of the favorable traits of the good ones was respecting your understanding of a problem and taking your word for the best decision. RATHER than spending HOURS of yours and their time trying to get them to understand so THEY could make the decision. I totally like Dalby's take on this.
Chapter 21 - the "insects came to do battle with the resources of the American chemical industries". Nicely put.
I was SO blown away by the location of the prison! And kept wondering what was the Ipcress file. Finally the end reveals all.
And Barb, I too, liked the lost earring and how the old man jailer was repaid.
First of all, my ILL book is a leather-bound copy with gold-edged pages that looks brand-spanking new. Since I couldn't bear to dog-ear the pages and didn't have sticky notes available, I have no quotes or specific spots to mention.
I wasn't sure from B and J's comments if I would like this book, but I did. Well, except for the brainwashing section. I didn't have any trouble with the characters, actually.
Having been to London several times, I had some idea about some of the places mentioned. And, honestly, I don't get too upset when I don't know a place in a book. I just skip over it.
And B, I'm not sure I would have picked up on the significance of the lost earing if I hadn't read your comment first. Yes, I am that dense.
B- and the metaphors! I only got about 3/4s of them.
J- for burning the papers in the back seat- maybe he held on to a corner until it was mostly burnt up and then put the last little bit in the ashtray to burn? That's the only thing I could come up with.
Did anyone else guess it was Dalby? That was my guess early on and I kept smacking my head whenever he talked to Dalby. Do you think Alice knew or suspected. She made that comment about him giving away his weaknesses to people he shouldn't...
I did not think it was Dalby. I think Alice knew everything (I have no idea why I think this).
I did not think it was Dalby. I think Alice knew everything (I have no idea why I think this).
I do love a good Cold War thriller but this one just didn't do it for me. In reading some other reviews of the book I found that Deighton said that he asked too much of the reader in this, his first book. I would agree, because there seemed to be so much that "Harry" knew that the reader didn't, and that's where most of my confusion came from.
I really struggled with the phone/office 4-way conversation in Chapter 17.
For the first 10 chapters or so I read the horoscopes at the beginning of each chapter diligently but for the life of me I couldn't conntect them to the events in the story. Now it strikes me that perhaps they were a way of sending coded messages to an agent in the field? Since they were posting classifieds to Dalby, could the horoscope have been Alice talking to Harry? Or Dalby to Jay? Or Ross to the EMP?
At the end, why/how was Dalby out of jail to crash a car? And Jay works for them now? WTH?
I did like Alice and Jean, too bad they were always deploying their brain power in the background.
I might give Deighton another try, I hear his later books are better, but overall I think I prefer Kenn Follett or Alistair MacLean.
"I really struggled with the phone/office 4-way conversation in Chapter 17" me to, I had to re-read that section at least 3 times.
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