Funeral in Berlin

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This is Len Deighton’s second of four spy novels with a nameless hero from Burnley, Lancashire, who in the film versions is called Harry Palmer (HP). It was published 50 years ago, has 51 brief chapters and was last reprinted in 2011. It takes place between 5 October and 10 November 1963. [JFK was killed 12 days later.] The Berlin Wall had been built a little over two years before. There are Berlin-related newspaper headlines on the first and last pages of the book. The Six Day War was some 3½ years off, but some early stirrings appear in this book…
Tense times in Europe and busy days for its guilds of spies. HP’s travails take him to France, East & West Berlin and Czechoslovakia. He meets with people with an often active WW II past: old and new spies and double agents, a Treblinka survivor, a former German general, etc., some of whom will return in other HP adventures. The tone is set from page 1 with HP, working for the civilian spy agency WOOC(P), visiting the eccentric Home Office official Hallam in his cramped living quarters.

Some reviewers argue whether the HP novels are Deighton’s best or not. My view is that the later spy books are more even, slower, with more plausible plots and less fun. His early preoccupation with WW II, science and technology gave way to epic searches for traitors and moles (cf. the three Bernard Samson trilogies plus its historical intermezzo “Winter”). The charm of his early books is that they are fast-paced, iconoclastic, with plausible and wildly improbable parts and uneven re quality of dialogue.

Re this book one cannot deny that some of the characters and atmosphere are brilliantly drawn. It was prophetic in letting a character long for a color TV with remote control, or HP’s weird boss Dawlish pondering about how normalizing the legal status of gays would ease his job. [ Such reforms followed from 1967 onward, too late for hapless, blackmailed Hallam]. It is, at times, very funny too: brands LD hates like Nescafé and Omo are trashed time and again. My best advice to readers is to list the song titles KGB Col. Stok quotes, and the ones played in the Dispatch Section on Charlotte Street. Next, go to Google, then YouTube and enjoy! When finished laughing, google “The Len Deighton Dossier”, a blog, for more background about the man and his books..