Books by Len Deighton
Len Deighton (1929-2026) was a British thriller writer and spy novelist, admired for his gritty, realistic novels and dry wit.
“All spy fiction is really an extended metaphor for the office. No character captures that better than Bernard Samson, a middle-ranking intelligence executive, who can’t trust anyone. He’s meant to be outwitting the KGB, but he could be any middle-aged man struggling to stay afloat in a big company, betrayed by his bosses as well as his wife. Berlin Game is the first (and best) of the Game, Set and Match trilogy, the height of Deighton’s achievements.” Read more...
The Best Classic British Thrillers
Matt Lynn, Novelist
“I leapt on Bomber and I devoured it. It was a departure for Len Deighton, because it had taken a year and a half for him to research…It’s painstaking in terms of its detail…What’s incontestable is that this fictitious bombing raid is invented for the night of the 31st of June 1943, and the events are narrated from multiple points of view. It’s a hugely ambitious novel…Each of the points of the narrative throws up subplots, in terms of wives, kids, mistresses, and emotional complications. The plane doesn’t take off until halfway through the book. It’s driven on (as your life would be, if you were part of that crew) by this remorseless determination to join the bomber stream; to evade, if possible, the attentions of the gunners and the night fighters; to plant your bombs as close as possible. In the dark, with the kind of rudimentary bomb aiming gear that they had, that was incredibly difficult to do, as well as bad news for the people underneath, many of whom were in villages short of the target. They were the ones who tended to get woken up at night by a very large bang. Len Deighton, at the controls of this book, did incredible justice to all of that.” Read more...
The Best World War II Thrillers
Graham Hurley, Thriller and Crime Writer
Interviews where books by Len Deighton were recommended
The Best World War 2 Historical Fiction
The dramatic events and scope of World War 2 make it one of the most popular settings for historical fiction. The range of books varies widely, from real-life stories written up as novels, to entirely fictional accounts which use one or more of the many horrific events of World War II as backdrop.
The Best World War II Thrillers, recommended by Graham Hurley
For all its horrors, World War II was a time when things happened to people and that, perhaps, is what makes it such an enduring source of fascination. Graham Hurley, author of the Spoils of War series, recommends five of the best World War II thrillers, including one that reads like nonfiction.
The Best Classic British Thrillers, recommended by Matt Lynn
Author Matt Lynn says that good thrillers need a sense of foreboding and tension – and a brilliant central character. “The thriller has always been a very political genre, a kind of snapshot in time”
