I don't always give five stars, but when I do, there are good reasons. The author plays us poor readers like a Stradivarius. And yet, at the end you will not only be satisfied, you know you knew but dare not believe it.
Bernard Samson is a quintessentially British product; ambivalent about personal relationships, tight lipped, self-made, bad with money, sensitised to failure, etc. He's good at what he does - very good, in fact too good. Unfortunately he is used and abused by nearly everybody in the story and one way or another they all treat him rather badly. He does not fit in and in most social circles he is the fish out of water, constantly reminded by his colleagues that he never went to Oxbridge. Samson weathers it with a sense of humour and a kind of detachment and caution that keeps his mind on the job and the quest for the traitor in his ranks.
This all plays on a different instrument to the likes of Le Carre. For a start it is written from the hero's point of view. apart from one book, and of course is therefore an intimate read. Among other things it is about the conflict of relationships - in this case the relationships with his friends and colleagues in the secret intelligence community. One of the things I enjoyed was the subtlety with which Bernard Samson discloses or does not disclose information to those around him. It gives the reader some reassurance that, whatever happens, he is mostly in command of more knowledge than anyone around him suspects.
It is impossible to delve deeper or it would give the game away, but it is one of the most expertly crafted spy stories I have had the pleasure of reading in a long time.
Edit.
I have now read the whole nine books...twice!
If you are coming to this fresh, you are in for a big treat. For me, the characters began talking to me, engaging with me and making me quite emotional - something that rarely happens for me. At the end of the books I wanted to tell Len Deighton what a swine he was. To ask him why he gets Bernard Samson gets a good kicking on a regular basis? Is it because because Len Deighton likes to do this? I also wanted to berate him for what he does to Fiona. It is unforgivable.
The books almost qualify for the epithet bildungsroman, and ironically a lot of the narrative is set in Germany. Almost but not quite. The characters stay more or less the same but what is done to them lays who and what they are to the bone.
In essence, if you are expecting a good spy story you will get a good spy story. But this set, taken as a whole, is a novel by any other name, with all the complexity that comes with literature. Nothing is what it seems. Don't trust Bernard Samson (he never knows the whole truth), don't trust Fiona or Brett or Silas and in particular don't trust that bloke Deighton who claims to have invented them.
It's that good.
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