Yesterday's Spy

This intrigued me from the start. Is Steve a hero gone bad, or is he still a hero? The story is set in the nineteen-seventies. Friendships from WW2 are strong, but perhaps people can change. The first-person narrator steers a dangerous path between the underworld and the Secret Service. At times, I......more

So, a few notes: I ordered this online, in the Penguin Modern Classics edition, and it got lost in the mail. No harm, no foul, these things happen, and it wouldn't surprise me if it turned up months later (as I had a similar lost-in-the-mail experience with "Tom Jones" a few years back, and it event......more

Originally published on my blog here in June 2004. The plots of a fair proportion of the novels Deighton has set contemporary to the date of writing involve something left over from the Second World War. There is an obvious reason why this happens, other than that the Cold War itself could be viewed......more

Mid-period Deighton, still using an anonymous spy as his protagonist (although here going by his wartime cover of Charlie), Yesterday's Spy is a solid espionage novel, by turns melancholy, bitter and action-packed. Charlie is tasked with investigating his old comrade, the splendidly named Steve Champ......more

It is a pacier novel than some of Deighton's previous books and the storyline is compelling, if not to the same level as Funeral in Berlin and The Ipcress File. The characters are both interesting and flawed. The main protagonist, in common with Deighton's previous novels, appears to be writing from......more