Samson

I've always loved espionage spy thrillers on TV and in the movies (Tinker Taylor Soldier Spy is both one of my favourite TV programmes and movies) and the real-life world of espionage in non-fiction but oddly it took me a long time to get around to reading any of the classics of spying and Cold War espionage. I finally got around to reading John Le Carre's George Smiley novels a couple of years ago and late last year read my first James Bond novel (Casino Royale natch) but then it was time to embark on Len Deighton's epic Bernard Samson series...

Epic because it encompasses 3 separate trilogies (plus a tenth book which acts as a kind-of-prequel). Now i was vaguely familiar with the story in the first trilogy from the ITV dramatisation of it some years ago but mostly i went into the world of these stories cold, and what a (Cold) world it was. I am not usually a fan of first person perspective in novels (8 of the books are written this way from Samson's point of view) but the sardonic sarcastic and witty way it was written and Samson describes events won me over.

Despite months of reading over 9 books i was still sad the stories didn't go on. There was apparently a vague notion of a final trilogy to take the story to the end of the Cold War but maybe its best the stories ended as they did in the chaotic final days of the Iron Curtain. What happened next to Samson and the other characters, well we just have to use our imagination...