A review by nickdablin
The Ipcress File by Len Deighton

4.0

I really enjoyed this Cold War espionage thriller. The writing style and narrative voice are great - sophisticated yet easy to read. The first person narrator has a cynical wit and penchant for amusing comparisons that brings to mind Raymond Chandler, but there's a gentler English subtlety to the sarcasm that makes it drily hilarious a lot of the time. The plot is somewhat hard to follow, in that the author doesn't wait for you to catch up. Bewildering events happen but our hero moves on to the next chapter without stopping for anything like a straightforward explanation. In this sense it feels very real, almost like a slice-of-life of someone doing the dull grunt work of espionage, like a more realistic James Bond - there's similar globe-trotting and clandestine plots, but the main character feels much more human, and the veiled threats and shadowy conspiracies actual feel threatening. The final payoff of the mystery verges a little too close to ridiculous to be truly satisfying, and the pacing takes a hit at the end as everything is wrapped up in a clunky expositional bow, but it ends up as a minor part of the experience, and the main character is interesting enough to be worth going along for the ride anyway. As you might expect from a book this old, there is a little bit of casual sexism and racism to squint past, but it's not too bad on that front.
All in all, an exciting and mostly grounded spy thriller that I thought falls slightly short of greatness but is a very enjoyable read nonetheless.