The IPCRESS File

Critics Review

• They don’t, as they say, write them like this anymore. You will be entertained, informed, thrilled and dazzled. Long may he, and his creations, live on.

  The Guardian

• Len Deighton’s spy novels are so good they make me sad the Cold War is over.

  Malcolm Gladwell

• Deighton’s fiction has stood the test of time. His habitually acerbic narrative voice still has much to say to contemporary readers … Now a fresh generation have the chance to sample Deighton’s wares as Penguin republishes many of his books.

  The Observer

• The Ipcress File helped change the shape of the espionage thriller … the prose is still as crisp and fresh as ever … there is an infectious energy about this book which makes it a joy to read, or re-read.

  Daily Telegraph

• The self-conscious cool of Deighton’s writing has dated in the best way possible … stone-cold Cold War classic.

  The Guardian

• To read it today is like taking a ride in a time machine, so accurate and astute are its evocations of its era … Deighton knows how to pinch the ephemera that stick in our souls … Never not a joy to read. It is also a book that changed the way we see the world.

  The Times

• The IPCRESS File has lost none of its nerve-tingling fascination … [and] the pleasure of engaging with a master of his craft.

  Daily Mail

• A wonderful mixture of the exciting and the amusingly humdrum … James Bond may be thinner, but so is his dialogue.

  Daily Telegraph

• Deighton is a fearless observer of the deceptive human world.

  New Statesman

• A dazzling performance. The verve and energy, the rattle of wit in the dialogue, the side-of-the-mouth comments, the evident pleasure taken in cocking a snook at the British spy story’s upper-middle-class tradition – all these made it clear that a writer of remarkable talent in this field had appeared.

  New York Times Book Review