Secret File

A high-ranking scientist has been kidnapped, and a secret British intelligence agency has just recruited Deighton's iconic unnamed protagonist-later christened Harry Palmer-to find out why. His search begins in a grimy Soho club and brings him to the other side of the world. When he ends up amongst the Soviets in Beirut, what seemed a straightforward mission turns into something far more sinister. With its sardonic, cool, working-class hero, Len Deighton's sensational debut and first bestseller The IPCRESS File broke the mold of thriller writing and became the defining novel of 1960s London.

In 1963, Berlin is dark and dangerous. Len Deighton's skilled, jaded, anonymous hero of The IPCRESS File is now set to arrange the defection-and fake the death-of a leading Soviet scientist. A ferociously cool fable" (New York Times) and one of the first novels written after the construction of the Berlin Wall, Funeral in Berlin revels in the fraught, chilling atmosphere of a divided city"