Yesterday's Spy Writer: My Online On Crime Column On The New Batch Of Len Deighton's Reissued Paperback Spy Thrillers

When I was a teenager back in the 1960s, I was a huge fan of crime and spy thrillers (and I remain so today). 

I was weaned on Ian Fleming, and after he died in 1964 and I had read all of his James Bond novels and short stories, I looked for other spy thrillers to read, especially British spy thrillers. 

I read and enjoyed Eric Ambler, Graham Greene and John le Carre. I also read another British spy thriller writer named Len Deighton. 

Deighton’s protagonist in his first series of spy thrillers, in contrast to Ian Fleming’s high-living James Bond, was a working-class smart aleck. 

Deighton employed a first-person unnamed narrator for The Ipcress File and the other early thrillers. I liked the Deighton narrator and his sardonic voice. I also liked Deighton's clever plots and his vivid descriptions of characters, places, things and food (Deighton is an accomplished cook).   

When Michael Caine portrayed the unnamed spy in the 1960s film versions of The Ipcress File, Funeral in Berlin and Billion Dollar Brain, Caine suggested to the producers that they call him Harry Palmer. I thought Michael Caine nailed the character, and I enjoyed the films nearly as much as Deighton's novels.     

Over the years I’ve read nearly all of Deighton’s novels, including his WWII military history novels and his clever alternative history novel, SS-GB, which takes place in a post-WWI Briton that the Nazis have defeated and now occupy. 

Deighton, today at 96, must be pleased that Grove Atlantic is reissuing his novels. I have copies of the reissued The Ipcress Files, Funeral in Berlin, and SS-GB, three of my favorite Deighton thrillers, and I recently reread them. I believe they hold up nicely after all these years. 

And this August Grove Atlantic will reissue Deighton’s Yesterday's Spy, Billion Dollar Brain, An Expensive Place to Die and Spy Story. 

Grove Atlantic offers descriptions of the upcoming reissued thrillers: 

Steve Champion as a flamboyant businessman, former leader of an anti-Nazi network in the Second World War and a man surrounded by mysteries. There are rumors he is still in the spying business. The Department is nervous, so Champion’s oldest wartime ally is sent to the South of France to investigate. 

It’s time to re-open the file on Yesterday’s Spy ($17 paperback, 224 pages; ISBN: 978-0-8021-6325-7; Aug. 12, 2025), even if that could mean killing an old friend.

Billion Dollar Brain ($17 paperback; 304 pages; ISBN: 978-0-8021-6327-1; Aug. 12, 2025) is a classic spy thriller of lethal computer-age intrigue and a maniac’s private cold war, featuring the unnamed narrator from The IPCRESS File. He travels from the bone-freezing winter of Helsinki, Riga and Leningrad to the stifling heat of Texas, and soon finds himself tangling with enemies on both sides of the Iron Curtain.   

In An Expensive Place To Die ($17 paperback; 240 pages; ISBN: 978-0-8021-6323-3; Aug. 12, 2025), an unnamed spy is sent to Paris to deliver a file of nuclear secrets to a French doctor but soon finds himself sucked into a twilight world of sex, blackmail and hidden motive, where friend and enemy become indistinguishable.  

After six weeks in a nuclear submarine gathering computer data on Soviet activity, the mysterious, bespectacled spy known as Patrick Armstrong is desperate to return home in Spy Story ($17 paperback; 224 pages; ISBN: 978-0-8021-6319-6; Aug. 12, 2025). But when he arrives at his London flat, it appears to be occupied by someone who looks just like him—and he finds himself propelled into the heart of a conspiracy stretching from the remote Scottish Highlands to the Arctic ice. 

Grove Atlantic also offers a brief bio of Len Deighton (seen in the above photo from the 1960s): 

At the Royal College of Art his teachers called him subversive, but it was his first novel — The Ipcress File — that sealed his reputation as an iconoclast. Ian Fleming called it his “Book of the Year.” Through humor, characters with real depth, and impeccable research, Len Deighton’s original voice revolutionized the modern spy thriller. 

The enormous success of The Ipcress File and the subsequent Harry Palmer spy films made Michael Caine an international star. Bomber (perhaps his greatest novel) calmly and powerfully narrates the horror of war. SS-GB, a dystopian alternative history of the Nazi occupation of Britain, challenges us to think about how we relate to authoritarian government. 

Deighton is best remembered for Cold War spy novels with defiant, working-class heroes, including the famed Bernard Sampson series and the Pat Armstrong Quartet. Deighton’s work has entered the zeitgeist and that influence can be seen today from Motörhead’s album “Bomber,” to Austin Powers’ glasses, to references to his work in the films of Quentin Tarantino.

Born in 1929, Deighton is acclaimed as not just one of the greatest thriller writers of the 20th Century but a military historian, cookery writer, and graphic artist. His extraordinary career spanned four decades, selling over 30 million books, being published in 20 languages, and never falling out of print.