Len Deighton, a prolific British spy novelist, died on March 15 at age 97. Photo / Getty Images
Len Deighton, a prolific British spy novelist, died on March 15 at age 97. Photo / Getty Images
Len Deighton, the prolific British spy novelist whose best-selling books of betrayal and deception skewered espionage services in the East and the West, and sharply mocked English social strictures, reflecting his own rise from a childhood far from privilege, died on March 15. He was 97.
His literary agent, TimBates, confirmed the death but did not cite a cause.
The son of a chauffeur and a private cook for a wealthy London family, Deighton was a military photographer, pastry chef, airline cabin steward and commercial artist before deciding on a whim to attempt a spy novel after years of studying the genre during work-related layovers from Cairo to Hong Kong. The result, The Ipcress File, written tautly and with a deft satiric touch, became a phenomenon on its release in 1962 amid the James Bond craze.
Unlike the agents created by writers such as Ian Fleming, John le Carré and Graham Greene – characters who moved in the upper echelons of the intelligence field – the nameless protagonist of Deighton’s early spy novels was a working-class man who indulged in insolence and wisecracks as he set out to pull defectors from behind the Iron Curtain, root out moles and thwart criminal madmen.
Deighton’s reluctant hero took the bus or drove a Ford Zephyr from the secret service motor pool, not an Aston Martin. He fussed about filling out expense forms in his dingy London headquarters, was selected for certain assignments because of his gourmand’s physique (he was assigned to Helsinki because he was “the one best protected against cold”) and tangled with Oxford- and Cambridge-educated colleagues, remarking, “What chance did I stand between the communists on the one side and the establishment on the other?”
Driven by what he admitted was a “monumental inferiority complex,” Deighton wrote some 20 spy novels and more than a dozen works of nonfiction (some with co-authors) as well as screenplays, television scripts and travel guides.
His best-selling novels included the “Ipcress” sequels Funeral in Berlin (1964) and Billion Dollar Brain (1966). They were turned into films starring Michael Caine as the droll Cockney protagonist, who was christened Harry Palmer for the screen.
Deighton dismissed writing as a “goof-off profession”, but he said he thrilled at the impact his novels had on readers. “When you make a book, it’s like making a hand grenade,” he told The Daily Telegraph. “It’s a dull process but when you throw it, the person at the other end gets the effect.”
Deighton’s best-selling works, including "The Ipcress File," featured a working-class protagonist and satirical edge. Photo / Getty Images
His spy works are marked by elliptical narratives short on explanatory details, reflecting the mysteries of espionage, yet filled with unforgettable moles, traitors and other characters who double- and triple-cross one another.
“Deighton’s wry and ironic recognition of the realities of espionage and the crackling energy that motivates his fiction place him in the first rank of spy novelists,” critic George Grella wrote in the 1985 edition of Twentieth Century Crime and Mystery Writers. “He writes thrillers that are witty, thoughtful, authentic, and entertaining, a rare combination of merits.”
In his later years, Deighton’s shyness and his pivot to historical fiction and nonfiction works left him more removed from public awareness. “I’ve never written books for people more clever than I am, or more stupid,” he once said. “I’ve always tried to direct things at people like me.”
