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    Spy Hook
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    Spy Hook
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    Spy Hook
    Ebook358 pages6 hours

    Spy Hook

    By Len Deighton

    4/5

    ()

    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this ebook

    The long-awaited reissue of the first part of the classic spy trilogy, HOOK, LINE and SINKER, when the Berlin Wall divided not just a city but a world.

    Working for the Department was like marriage is supposed to be - ''til death do us part' - but the Department is really not like that; and neither are many marriages, including that of Bernard Samson. The cool and cynical field agent of the GAME, SET and MATCH trilogy has grown older and wiser. But things have not gone well for Samson: old pals are not as friendly as they used to be and colleagues are less confiding than they once were.

    Now, starting with his mission to Washington, life has become even more precarious for Bernard. Ignoring all warnings, friendly, devious and otherwise, he pursues his own investigation and, in California, meets with the biggest surprise of his life…

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherHarperCollins UK
    Release dateSep 30, 2010
    ISBN9780007395361
    Unavailable
    Spy Hook

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    Reviews for Spy Hook

    4/5

    11 ratings4 reviews

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    • 1/5
      THIS BOOK IS A FRAUD! THIS BOOK IS A JOKE! THIS BOOK IS AN OUTRAGE! Whew. Okay. Breathe.This was my first Len Deighton book after having heard about him for years. I knew he wrote spy books. I thought they might be like MaClean or Forsyth books. I was dead wrong. This wasn't a spy book. It was a mystery, and not a very good one. Additionally, this was the fourth book in what very well might be a nine book series, and it's not much of a stand alone novel, so that hurts it.In this book, Bernard Sampson is a "spy" working for the "Service" who has a buddy who has moved to America who confides in him that there are some funds no one knows about in the Service that are missing and wonders if Sampson's wife, who has defected to the KGB, has something to do with it. Days later, Sampson is told this man has been murdered, which turns out to be false. Sampson's curiosity is piqued, so he asks a few questions and before you know it, everyone he talks to is telling him to shut the F*** up and mind his own damn business, even old, trusted friends he's known for years. He's even sent out to L.A. where he's to be given instructions, is picked up at LAX, driven to a compound and is reunited with an old friend he thought was dead, but is obviously not. This guy gives him the same line. On the way back to the airport, the CIA picks him up and gives him the same line. What the hell is going on? He goes to visit an old family friend in the English countryside who tells him the same thing and who makes him promise not to go visit his new hot girlfriend's unstable uncle, which he immediately does, and who tries to kill him. He's saved by a friend. He goes to the director of the Service and spills all, thinking this will solve things. He's then sent to Berlin, where, as he and a friend are getting off the plane, he spots MPs waiting -- for him. The director has set him up. His friend claims to be him and is dragged off so he can escape and he goes to East Germany, returns, goes to an old Service friend's house, confronts him about the money, his wife, his friend, everything, is given some money and sent on his way and leaves. End of story. AND THAT'S IT!!! NO QUESTIONS ANSWERED. NO RESOLUTION. NOT EVEN ANY REAL ACTION. WTF??? What kind of spy story is this? This is pathetic. And Deighton has this annoying manner of presenting his characters as clowns, jokes, with sad attempts at humor. It's bad writing. And Sampson is grouchy and a real asshole to everyone he meets, except his 22 year old girlfriend, whom he adores. I mean, you can't like this guy. I was rooting for him to get shot. Nothing happens in this book and I read this criticism on a lot of reviews, apparently because the author uses this book to set up the next book in the series. But I'll be damned if I'm supposed to buy a book just to buy another! That sucks! That's marketing, not authorship. The irony is, I did buy the sequel when I bought this and I started reading it immediately to find out what the hell happens to this jerk, but if I don't get some resolution out of this book, I'm writing this author off permanently and burning both books. I already hate the guy. What a schmuck. Definitely not recommended -- at all. Under any circumstance.
    • 4/5
      I read the Game, Set and Match trilogy a long time ago and recall virtually nothing about the books or the main character, Bernard Samson. Deighton's introduction to the 2010 paperback states his intention to write the three books in this trilogy so that they may be read in any order, each one being complete in itself. I don't think he has really succeeded in this. Spy Hook throws the reader into a meeting between Samson and a former colleague, now working for an American financial company, about a significant amount of money missing from British intelligence service funds. As the novel is written in the first person, apart from conversations with others and occasional ruminations from Samson himself, there is no easy way to let us know rather important things about the background. Samson's wife has defected to East Germany, leaving him with his two children. It would be interesting, to say the least, to know more about that event but we are going to have to wait for the next book or maybe have to go back to London Match to find out. Quite a lot of this story concerns Samson's father, also a British intelligence officer, and his work in Europe after WWII. Again we are starved of detail, in part because the narrator himself does not know the facts. We'll have to go to the prequel, Winter, to clear this up. The most obvious failure of completeness is in the ending when, after a relatively slow start, the story is precipitated into a major cliff-hanger. There is no way that you could avoid reading the next book. I suppose that Deighton is a sufficiently deft and entertaining writer for it not to be a hardship to read the other Samson books, but he doesn't make allowances for a new reader's lack of access to his card index and storyboard.There are a few typical Deighton-isms around. We learn again of his liking for Southern California. He will include jokes for no obvious reason - in this case a non-PC jibe at the Chinese. I worry a bit about Samson's relationship with his new girl-friend - half his age and multi-talented - whose attraction for him seems a little improbable. Deighton was approaching his sixtieth birthday when he wrote the book so maybe this was part of a ageing male's personal fantasies. The author is a competent writer who creates fluid plots and, generally, believable characters. As with all these cold war spy stories those coming new to them have to see them as historical fiction, but the better ones are none the worse for that. I'd rate this as one of the better and recommend it to anyone prepared to go the distance with the series. I have committed to Line and Sinker and I suppose I will go for the prequel as well.
    • 1/5
      I did the first 60 pages and gave up. Plodding slow-pace with no incentive to turn the page except to experience more boredom.
    • 4/5
      Those who are looking for swift action and a firm resolution won’t get it here. Instead we are given 1/3 of a larger story arc. Deighton wanted to write a trilogy and he understands how. This novel cannot be read on its own and have any satisfaction for the reader any more than reading a few chapters of a single novel can. Why people complain about this is beyond me. Either they didn’t bother to find out that this is part 1 of 3 or they have a complete lack of understanding of the true nature of a multi-book story.Not reading a previous Bernard Samson novel isn’t a hindrance in understanding the main character. I was a bit worried that it might and I’m somewhat of a stickler for reading things in order, but since this was written as part of a second series of books, I figured that Deighton would be good enough to fill us in on who Samson is and what had happened to him in previous novels. Yes, we get plenty of background info on Samson as well as his friends and coworkers, but not so much info that it bogs down the story.The story itself isn’t a mover and a shaker; it’s a set up, a prelim, almost a prologue. It’s more the day in the life of a spy rather than a nuts-and-bolts spy-craft kind of tale. The narrative is almost equal parts Samson’s personal life as professional. He strikes me as a mild-mannered kind of guy, unused to action or at least past it in his career. He also strikes me as someone who doesn’t think ahead much, at least in terms of the negative things that might happen. A fair weather spy, perhaps, and he’s almost completely without resources once the department turns on him.When we leave him in Spy Hook, he is hooked indeed. Not really the victim of a set-up per se, but he’s put himself into an awkward position with the department’s larger agenda and he’s got to be handled somehow. At this point it seems the powers that be don’t know what form the handling should take; something temporary until they can either finish or find an alternative way to complete their ends, or something more permanent. Overall the characterizations are mild; no clear villains or heroes aside from Samson himself. His individual entanglements seem to all be of the luke-warm variety and there’s a distinct impression of English reserve throughout. Very different in style and execution than say, Le Carre and I’m looking forward to the next 2 parts.