Inspiring Older Readers
The Ipcress File by Len Deighton
I’m not much of a fan of spy thrillers – I like John le Carré but he’s something of an exception and I actively loathe Ian Fleming and the whole James Bond shtick – so this might seem an odd choice of reading for me. In truth I picked it up because of the splendid, iconic black and white jacket of the first edition and because I read an article in which Deighton’s first novel is described as the working-class, gritty anti-Bond – which I figured must be a good thing.
You won’t be surprised to hear that just about anything you say about the novel and its plot could be construed as a spoiler because the labyrinthine complexity of the storyline is, I suspect, very much part of the appeal to spy-novel aficionados. In any case, the plot is both simultaneously intriguing and ultimately a little disappointing when the full exposition comes along at the end and so I won’t dig too deeply into the various twists and turns.
What is really interesting about the book is both the unnamed central character Deighton creates through whose eyes this whole tale unfolds and the style and structure the book adopts to tell the tale in what ends up being a sometimes puzzlingly oblique manner. A successful movie was made of The Ipcress File with a young Michael Caine in the lead role and the film gave him the name of Harry Palmer – a tag that appears nowhere in the novel and nowhere in Deighton’s subsequent novels. I think Deighton's decision to maintain anonymity for the central character in a first person narrative is very important to the creative whole – we are, or can allow ourselves to be, the protagonist and in so doing we become the story teller.
The structure of the book is quite daring for a first novel. It takes the form of being a dossier or report back that is being delivered by our unnamed secret agent hero to the Home Secretary outlining the origins and outcomes of the case that is The Ipcress File. It’s a tale of subterfuge, double dealing, traitorous spies and real-life seedy strip clubs, apartments and foreign escapades. I can entirely see how the ‘anti-Bond’ label got attached – this is gritty and grimy stuff and our reluctant hero has no flashy gadgets, cars or cocktails. How did the secret services operate during the Cold War? Well this, I’m prepared to believe, might not be an inaccurate picture of that world. If you have also read le Carré's The Spy Who Came In From The Cold, you’d be tempted to make some obvious comparisons in tone and intent but ultimately they are very different books.
For me the really innovative element of this read is Deighton’s deliberately unfocussed, sometimes off-centre way of telling the story. There’s always a feeling of something slightly hallucinogenic about the way the story progresses and there are times when the plot plays to this – especially when our protagonist has to endure a bewildering brainwashing by ‘Hungarian’ enemy agents. By using the first person narrative technique it allows us to be given an almost stream-of-consciousness as situations evolve around the central character – so we share his confusions and his mistaken perspectives - mistakes that which won't be revealed to us until he himself discovers them at the end. We get no more information that he gets and so we invest trust in people and places that turn out to have been entirely inappropriate and to mistrust those we should have trusted.
Deighton himself said of this technique:
“Using first person narrative enabled me to tell the story in the distorted way that subjective memory provides… what happens in The IPCRESS File is to be found somewhere in the uncertainty of contradiction.”
So, did I enjoy this book? Well, the answer is yes and no. It took me at least a third of it to tune into the style and to be comfortable with what Deighton was doing and once I found that space, I could relax as the plot unfolded. But it’s also true that this has some of the unmistakable characteristics of a first novel in that I couldn’t help but feel that there was too much trickiness here for its own sake rather than because the plot demanded it. There were times when I felt it flirted with territory that might have got an outing in a Steed and Mrs Peel episode of The Avengers and, as a result, it suffers and doesn’t quite reach the compelling heights of A Spy Who Came In From The Cold.
However, although spy-thrillers aren’t likely to become part of my staple reading diet, I’m glad I gave this a go and I still think the book’s jacket is a masterpiece I’m glad to have on my shelves.
Terry Potter
March 2019