Deighton is so good! His characters are wonderfully complex and his settings drip with authenticity.

3.5 Stars. A wry ending to the trilogy. I continued to enjoy the British spy story and the craven characters and they way they drove the storytelling. There isn't a lot of development in this book, but that is because the characters are so well developed in the first two books. I will probably check out the remaining series at some point, because I am curious about Fiona's downfall.

This trilogy (Berlin Game, Mexico Set and London Match) comes very close to touching the Holy Trinity of spy literature: John Le Carre's Karla Trilogy. But it's difficult to say exactly why that's the case. In both, the middle installment I thought was, by far, the weakest part. Perhaps Smiley's Game was a stronger finish? Apart from edge-of-your seat human and spy drama there is a cloud of weariness in JLC's trilogy: spies are confronted with the futility of their life's work and doubt is cast upon the battle of ideologies which sustains it. Maybe that layer is absent here?
Regardless, Bernard Samson is one on my favorite all-time characters - witty, sarcastic and self-deprecating. And the betrayal in Berlin Game is a great twist, which sets up the next two books.

Thank god there are 7 more....

Originally published on my blog here in September 2004.

The third novel in the Game, Set and Match trilogy continues the story of how Bernard Samson copes with the aftermath of his wife's defection to the Soviet Union, the event which provided the climax to [b:Berlin Game|482120|Berlin Game (Bernard Samson, #1)|Len Deighton|http://d.gr-assets.com/books/1175120651s/482120.jpg|3095609]. KGB officer Erich Stinnes has in his turn defected - the central action of [b:Mexico Set|386254|Mexico Set (Bernard Samson, #2)|Len Deighton|http://d.gr-assets.com/books/1174355777s/386254.jpg|3020875]. And now it appears, from what London's intelligence services learn from Stinnes and other agents, that there is another KGB agent in a senior position in the Secret Intelligence Service. This time the novel is not so much concerned with the identity of the traitor, as the first part of the trilogy had been, but with whether the person pinpointed by the allegations is guilty or not. It certainly quickly becomes in the personal interests of many of the characters to support and exaggerate the rumours going round - this is office politics on a large scale.

The importance of the city of Berlin to this trilogy is hard to exaggerate. As a symbol of the Cold War it is unsurpassed, and so this is frequently true of spy fiction of that era. The divided city with its crazy town planning that resulted from being split makes an atmospheric background for these tales of betrayal. Mexico Set and London Match may use the names of other locations from Bernard's story for their titles, but Berlin is more important in the novels than either of them. So it is fitting that the final scene of the whole trilogy takes place in Berlin (though enough loose ends are left that it must have seemed unlikely that this was the last novel featuring Bernard Samson even before the appearance of [b:Spy Hook|482128|Spy Hook (Bernard Samson, #4)|Len Deighton|http://d.gr-assets.com/books/1338861768s/482128.jpg|1605212].

Berlin Game is the best of these three novels, and indeed of all nine stories featuring Samson as the central character. But no one who has read that novel will fail to want to read the others, and they are rewarding too; Deighton is one of the best of thriller writers even when not at the absolute peak of form.

I have recently re-discovered Len Deighton and I have become enthralled with his writing. I have been reading the entire Samson series and am thoroughly enjoying the series. If you check out my other reviews of the books in the series you'll see the same comments.

In all of my reading I most enjoy plots that are reasonably realistic and have good strong characters. Deighton supplies all of these.