Happy Belated Birthday To Thriller Writer Len Deighton

Yesterday was Len Deighton's birthday.

I happen to rereading one of Deighton's spy thrillers from the 1960s, The Billion Dollar Brain. I enjoyed his spy stories when I was a teenager in the 1960s and I came across a couple of old paperback copies of The Funeral in Berlin and The Billion Dollar Brain.  

I like his unnamed narrator in the early novels (called Harry Palmer in the Michael Caine films). He is sort of a British Philip Marlowe working the espionage beat.

I have in my library several of Deighton's hardback books, including his Bernard Sansom spy series.

I recall in the sixties that some critics and reviewers called Deighton's working class hero the "anti-Bond," but I like both Fleming and Deighton. Their thrillers were different, but both were well done in their own way.

I also liked the Michael Caine films made from Deighton's novels and the later TV series starring Ian Holm as Bernard Sansom. 

You can read Jake Kerridge's 2009 interview with Len Deighton in the British newspaper the Telegraph via the below link: 

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/books/4681966/Interview-with-Len-Deighton.html