This book can standalone as a good spy story, as can the others in this trilogy, but the storyline attains excellence when read in series - Berlin Game, Mexico Set, and London Match. The tension ebbs and flows throughout the trilogy, but it isn't until the climax of London Match that we see the full scope. I honestly think this is the best book of the three, but maybe that's just because all the threads finally come together. Highly recommended!

It's one of those hall-of-mirrors British spy stories in which the puzzle is to figure out who is working for whom, and who is double-crossing whom.
I was rereading my Len Deightons, partly to see how much impact they still have post-cold war, and I picked this one up out of order. After the first few pages I remembered that this was third in the Bernard Samson series, set in the 1970's and 80's, but it has close affinities to the Harry Palmer series of the 60's, especially Funeral in Berlin. (This has a 1985 publication date). If you're completely new to Len Deighton I'd start with those, and of course you should read Berlin Game and Mexico Set before this.
Some people think Deighton deteriorated in the later spy books. They contain fewer wisecracks and less descriptive scene- setting. In compensation there's a lot of subtle humor in the portrayal of the Dilbert-like atmosphere of office politics, and the plots are more sharply focussed and draw naturally to a climax. The earlier books tend to jump from episode to episode with a tidying up of plot in the last chapter.

I would have to agree with many of the other reviewers in stating that this is one of the better Bernard Samson books. It is a good follow up and great end to this series. He pulled off a book that has a good deal of suspense through out. There is also a lot of human drama outside of the spy vs. spy game. If you are into espionage books this is a great set to send time with.

In Bernard Samson Len Deighton created an everyman character who is smart, tough, intuitive, and is double crossed by everyone he cares about. Since I've read (and re-read) all 9 of the Bernard Samson nonology, it's hard to limit my comments just to "Game, Set, and Match". In any event, Bernard was betrayed by his wife in several different ways, by his best friend in truly horrible fashion, and by all of his cohorts at SIS. These are great and very readable spy stories, but they also provide a very real look into the dishonesty confronting all of us. That is, one never knows how the world looks to friends and colleagues, and when they are being honest and when they are lying. These are really great books that I would recommend to anyone!

Len Deighton is the perfect antidote for those sick and tired of Tom Clancy novels. In all of Deighton's works, the human is the center of the book, and the dialogue and the characters are outstanding. No thrilling machines or gadgets to get in the way of a good spy novel here. I read all of the Game, Set and Match books when they were published, and then all the following books in the series. I just can't get enough of Bernard Samson, Fiona, Bret, Dickie, Werner et al. These are the most memorable characters I've ever come across in the spy genre. They are all believable, possessing strengths and vulnerabilities that we all have. All are driven by duty, love, deceit, conceit and are capable of treachery. Too bad the Cold War had to end so soon. I sort of wish that the Berlin Wall didn't have to come down so that Mr. Deighton can continue to write about the exploits of Bernard Samson.

I started in the middle of this trilogy and immediately bought the first one and got the third one from my aunt. If love this type of action, then you must read these books. There is drama, international intrigue and just enough romance to not spoil the action. Actually, the woman is just as cold as anyone in these books. I think the British have the best fictional spies of all...

This book provides an excellent overview of the the Battle of Britain. One gets the impression that this book was intended to be the pictorial compliment to the author's more in depth account of the battle 'Fighter'. Included are many photographs, drawings, charts and maps which help explain the battle on a day by day basis. The book also looks at air power and technology from 1918-1939, the rise of the Luftwaffe, aircraft designs and radar and some of the personalities involved with the battle. Included are many personal accounts from the combatants themselves that along with the pictorial content bring the battle to life. Some brief analysis is provided on where the RAF got it right and where the Luftwaffe got it wrong. Overall a delightful book which is an easy read and an excellent starting point of reference.

This is a great first book on the Battle of Britain. I have enjoyed many Max Hastings and Len Deighton history books because of their ability to make these subjects very readable. The book includes sections on the equipment of both sides of the Battle and keeps the book personal and interesting. The die hard history buffs will probably not care for this book as much as some because it lacks the thoroughness of an in-depth account. This book is excellent as an introduction to the Battle or military history in general.

An oldie but goldie in the cold war spy double double-crossing genre. This has an original 1964 publication date. It came after Spy Story. Some characters recurr in The Ipcress File where the proragonist (nameless in this) is called Palmer. The Spy Who Came in From the Cold had already been written (and we'd had Graham Greene).
I remembered it for the ingenious plotting. Re-reading it I'm struck by the quality of the prose. Later Len Deightons don't contain such fancy writing. He loves describing the shabby and dingy:
"I looked around at Grenade's office: the brown-stained wainscotting, the plaster walls discolored in patches near the ceiling and the old-fashioned metal radiators under which a rash of cream-colored pimples proclaimed the haste of a clumsy painter."

This was Deighton's second book, before he became vaguely hackish and joined the Ludlum/Forsythe "hefty Cold War thriller" gang. Here he has style to burn, definitely influenced by Chandler but not at all a pastiche or pale imitation. His sentences are crisp and always un-cliched; his attitude, as filtered through his nameless British protagonist, is cynical and put-upon and tough as a blackjack. You're more than welcome to picture Michael Caine embodying the anti-hero, as he did in the effective (though a bit uneven) film.

Though the title implies that this is the story of a single bomber crew over Germany in 1943, "Bomber" goes farther - much farther, only starting with the crew of the heavy bomber "Joe for King". Deighton proceeds to cover the families of the crew, other crew members and their superiors before cutting across the channel to the enemy - night-fighter pilots, their controllers in German air defense, various suspicious characters from across the spectrum of Germany's military - from "respectable" Luftwaffe and Wehrmacht personnel to shadowy types from the "Abwehr" and the SS. We also meet the civilian residents of Altgarten, a Ruhr-area town nobody would think of bombing, but which manages to get plastered all the same. It's mid-summer 1943, when "Joe for King" is sent into the Ruhr as part of a massive night-time raid against the industrial centers of Krefeld. Lacking night-vision goggles, RAF pilots drop their bombs on targets marked by flares left by directing aircraft - in this case, specially equipped Mosquitoe night-fighters. When the marking aircraft for the Krefeld raid is shot down too early, its flares are released over Altgarten. This error is compounded by inherent flaws in RAF tactics (like targeting bombs in the center of cities, where bombs are more likely to hit civilian homes than factories and military installations), and the town becomes the unintended target for the massive strike. "Bomber" is to RAF's wartime bomber command what "Traffic" is to the DEA - a story of massive scale borne by wide cast if characters that never stops growing. Deighton doesn't let something meaningless as nationality get in the way of determining who is good or evil (the Germans get the bombs here, but Nazi genocide also gets prominent mention, with plenty of nasty Waffen SS to remind us why people were fighting). On the British side, we see officers acting less like gentlemen than soldiers. Political correctness is the rule (this is the country that gave us "1984"; "Joe for King"'s commander is suspected of incipient Bolshevism - it's very name hints at Stalin). Those who won't fall in line risk being labeled as LMF (Lacking Moral Fiber) - officially branded as cowards. Though books with such a command of detail normally favor the efforts of those they depict, Deighton is uniformly negative on the subject, a tone reinforced by his many subplots. Lambert, "Joe for King's" rebel pilot, plays the best cricket in Bomber Command - leading his odious superior to compel his participation in an upcoming tournament on pain of getting LMF'd. (Worse - the commander puts pressure on Mrs. Lambert after her husband has departed for the big raid). The bombers fly from Warley Fen, a once verdant field seized from its original owners who now stare at the airfield, mourning for what they know they will never have again. In Germany, ADF is managed by August Bach, an aged warrior preparing to marry his young son's nanny, not knowing how her youthful looks have made her the target of vicious rumors through Altgarten. The pilots of a night-fighter squadron (nichtjagdeschwader), preparing for a feared RAF attack on the Ruhr, are thrown into turmoil when Abwehr and Gestapo appear in search of a stolen classifed memo. The memo, it turns out, details hypothermia experiments on concentration camp prisoners (this may be same memo mentioned early in Robert Harriss' superb "Fatherland"). The corrupt assistant to Altgarten's Burgomeister arranges for the downgrading of the town's remaining Jews (from 1/3rd to 2/3rd "Jewishness" - though these jews are even more likely to face deportation and certain death, they will have greater freedom to marry other jews). Altgarten itself is flooded with profiteers funneling goods looted from conquered parts of Russia and the Netherlands. It seems that war is the only thing keeping the world safe because it occupies all the amoral typed who have to fight it. The only morally just adults are the TENO - the civil safety personnel who dig people out of bombed buildings. Because they are stationed in Altgarten, they get the biggest break: when the raid comes, they have the shortest commute. With so much going on, you just know you're bound to miss something. This is the sort of book that speed-readers hate. You'll probably lose count of all the characters that Deighton throws at you, though this doesn't hurt the plot as much as make the book one you'll want to re-read. Be warned - once you pick up bomber, you'll probably be spoiled for any other novel on the war in the skies over Europe.

The best fictional account of the "Other Side's" (German) view of being the "attacked". Mr. Deighton obviously has done his homework in showing how one massive,confused attack on a German town in the Summer of 1943 devastates everyone involved from the British RAF planners and pilots, politicians, and even more the German civilian home front, not to mention just about everyone else on the German side,from the SS,Luftwaffe, to the totally innocent on the ground. When the air raid alarms go off in the ficticious German town to the inevitable,terrifying end, mistakes and all, you know you're reading from a master. The ending is as terrible as you can imagine...

In this meticulously researched and finely-wrought novel, author Len Deighton interweaves the stories of a large cast of characters, German and British, in the hours leading up to a night bomber attack on a fictional Germany city. Due to crew error, a small German town is accidentally bombed by part of the bomber force. The story revolves around the men who fly the heavy British bombers, the men on the ground in Germany who must deal with the carnage of the bombs, and the German airmen and radar men who try to stop the bombers short of their tragic attack. Deighton writes that he read over 200 books to prepare for this novel. He also interviewed many British and German veterans and civilians and flew in most of the planes described in the book. The result is a book that favors neither side but instead focuses on the individual humanity of the characters, with all their strengths and weaknesses. Thousands upon thousands of warriors and civilians on both sides died horrible deaths and in a war that was, without a doubt, hell on earth. Though there is no glory in war, the book is filled with individual acts of selflessness and heroism that elevate the participants above the slaughter. Their heroism is not without great price, though, from the fireman battling the blazes to the British pilot who fights to bring his plane home only to suffer a breakdown, and the German pilot who is being hunted down for disagreeing with Nazi policy. I highly recommend this book. It is a must-read especially for those who desire to learn more about the air war over Germany.

I read this book in 1980 not long after it was first published in 1979 and I found it to be a very easy to read account of Hitler and the German Army during the early period of World War Two. As mentioned in the earlier review, the author offers a general overview of this period but covers such things as Hitler and his relationship with the German Army and its commanders, Hitlers 'style' of warfare, the concept of 'Blitzkrieg' and the weapons & tactics involved and finally the camapign in France. The book is well researched and is very easy to read with 20 maps, 59 B&W photos and a number of line drawings and charts to assist the reader. I do not think that the book or any of its ideas has aged since it was first published in 1979 and I would recommend it to anyone who is looking to understand how the German Army conquered all before it in 1940.

This is a well researched, heavily illustrated and easy to read book on the subject of Blitzkrieg or 'Lightning War'. The specific area of interest is it's application by the Germans in their invasion of Holland, Belgium and France in the summer of 1940. The meat of the book is in the middle. Part 3 (Blitzkrieg: Weapons & Methods) looks at the development of the Blitzkrieg concept, originating, Deighton says with Prussian military doctrines. Ideas by English Tank experts such as J.F.C. Fuller and B.H. Liddel Hart were added later. This section of the book naturally spends a fair amount of time on the emergence of the Tank and it's use as one of the principal weapons of Blitzkrieg.

Blitzkrieg is defined as 'a swift, sudden military offensive, usually by combined air and land forces'. Deighton adds - 'and as evolved by Heinz Guderian and used by his forces', giving credit to the man who perfected the concept. Indeed, the German breakthrough at Sedan in May 1940 (see Part 4 'The Battle of The Meuse') and the subsequent routing of the French army is a spectacular example of the use of Blitzkrieg. Offcourse any discussion about battles in France in 1940 must conclude with the Germans surrounding and trapping over 250,000 men of the British Expeditionary Force (BEF) on the French coast near Dunkerque.

It is to do with Dunkerque that the most startling supposition emerges from the book. The introduction was written by Gen. Walther Nehring, who in 1940 was Guderians' Chief of Staff and was with him at Sedan. Nehring writes with conviction, and Deighton's arguments seem to support the view, that if not for a precipitous Halt Order by Hitler, the German forces could have captured the entire BEF. It is argued that the prospect of a 'Disaster at Dunkerque', rather than the miracle that we have come to know of, would have been too much for the British to stomach. The opportunity for sueing for peace and of obtaining an end to the war by May 1940, would have been a real possibility in such circumstances.

In this book Deighton looks at the political social, and econmic factors, as well as German military history in the 1930's to show how this led to development of the panzer division, and Blitzkrieg. Much of this book is spent decribing Hitler's rise to power, terms of the 1918 treaty, and the political games that were played out in the 1930's giving Germany it's new empire. This is important, because it had such a large effect on how Germany proceeded for the rest of the war. The book then goes into the development of tank warfare, how the tatic evolved from the shock troops at the end of WWI, how Germany's leaders had found new better ways to fight, and why the allies were still so backward in their thinking.

Dieghton points out that in May 1940 the only real difference between the German and allied armies was their leadership and tatics. Deighton gives a clear and easy to understand analysis tank warfare, as well as giving very good backgroung into the sorounding political and social situations that many WWII history books lack.

This book is as an admirable example of the good old rule in journalism: "Comfort the afflicted, afflict the comfortable."

It's fitting. Much of the victory credit belongs to a Canadian newspaper publisher in England, Lord Beaverbrook. As Minister of Aircraft Production, he provided so many aircraft that the Royal Air Force ended the Battle of Britain with more aircraft than when it started. For both sides, the crucial elements were production and tactics -- German aircraft production didn't peak until 1944. As for tactics, the entire German war effort was based on "lightning victories" such as the defeat of Poland and France. The British relied on their old standby of being able to outlast any enemy.

Granted, everyone "knows" about the Battle of Britain. Deighton challenges the comfortable old myths about the war, and points out that a lot of "what we know" just isn't so. The Germans deny there ever was a "Battle of Britain;" later in the war, they'd lose more aircraft in a single day of combat than during the entire August-September 1940 campaign against England. The British victory is hailed as equal to the defeat of the Spanish Armada and Nelson's victory at Trafalgar, a myth Deighton neatly punctures.

A major element is the incredible blunders and mistakes by Germans and British. War is truly a case of victory going to whoever makes the least mistakes. These range from strategic and production decisions made in the mid-1930s, to Adolph Hitler's fatal hubris in the summer of 1940 that "the British have lost the war, but they don't know it; one must give them time, and they will come around." Hitler only understood lightning victories; the British relied on being able to outlast their enemies.

Without going into technical detail that would swamp the average reader, Deighton masterfully explains why choices such as a lighter breech-block on the Oerlikon MG FF was a handicap for German pilots, as was the British decision to use nitro-cordite ammunition after everyone else switched to nitro-cellulose. Such details, explained in clear and concise form, are the treasure of this book.

Add them up, and it becomes clear why Germany could not win World War II. The British, for all their stupidity, had a democratic system in which errors could be corrected. Germany had a dynamic leader, and the military knew it was better to procrastinate than to suggest corrections to his decisions.

In short, from the Battle of Britain to VE-Day, Churchill spent the war being sometimes wrong and often being corrected. Hitler spent the same time being sometimes right, without his errors ever being corrected. That may not seem like much, except this book ties it all together to clearly illustrate the inevitable outcome of democracy versus a closed society.

Deighton has done a masterful job. He explains the "when, where, who, when and how" of the Battle of Britain as do most histories. Most important, he explains "why" it was won. Those six words are the "six honest serving men (They taught me all I knew)" of Rudyard Kipling and all journalism, which Deighton employs as a master.

This is a very enlightening and easy to understand book on the history the RAF and the Luftwaffe in the time period between the end of WWI and the Battle of Britain. The book describes and compares the tactics, weapons and philosophies of both sides and also provides interesting biographies of the major players of the air war. The detailed descriptions and development histories of the various planes were very interesting and the numerous maps and diagrams help to make the text very understandable. There are many myths, such as the belief that the Germans did not have radar, that are dispelled in this excellent book. This was the first work by Len Deighton that I have read and upon completion I immediately bought Blitzkrieg and Blood Tears and Folly by the same author.

Deighton's "Fighter" is a comprehensive non-fiction historical account of the Battle of Britain based on a tremendous amount of research and fascinating in insight.

This is not my first book by Deighton. I've thoroughly enjoyed his fictional works including Bomber, and Goodbye Mickey Mouse because of their technical details overlayed on a stories of great dramatic tension. Fighter leaves the drama behind, and in doing so the end result in not diminished; for without the drama and story lines, facts and insights based on immense research are displayed with great clarity.

Make no mistake, the book is comprehensive and contains: 1) short biographies of the major figures of both sides including Churchill, Parks, Dowding, Goring, Milch, and Udet, 2) insights into the aircraft designers Messeschmitt, Junkers, Camm, and Mitchell, 3) insights into aircraft performance, 4) radar development, 5) radar/operations infrastructure, 5) the 4 stages of the Battle of Britain (Kanalkampf, Aldertag, the "critical period", and the 'blitz'), 6) famous pilots such as Malan and Galland, 7) day-by-day account of the battle, 8) in depth stop-action analysis of particular battles...

The research behind these details is amazing. Yet with all these details, Deighton makes it an easy read, not a laborious task. Deighton takes no sides in this battle, and seeks the truth, objectivity, and historical accuracy. And in this regard, the book is an unrivaled success.

If you want to know what really happened in the Battle of Britain, and why, then this is THE book to read.

"Blood, Tears, and Folly" is simply one of the best books on World War II ever published. For those already familiar with the basic dimensions of the war, Deighton's book magnifies key elements which shaped the conflict and defined the times. For instance, Deighton explains how Germany's lack of a strategic bomber force was a major contribution to the Luftwaffe's defeat in the battle of Britain. Deighton also tears down the myths surrounding Erwin Rommel and explains in detail the breakdown of the German offensive in Russia. Rarely has an author made detailed history so easy to read and understand. If your looking for a simple study of the overall war look elsewhere, but if you wish to learn more about key moments, men, weapons and strategies of all the major powers, Deighton's book will amaze and delight.

Len Deighton does an excellent job in looking at nearly all aspects of the Second World War. One of its strongpoint is that he provides a lot of background in addressing the problems and events of the Second World War. In order to understand why the Battle of France was fought the way it was, he takes you back to the First World War, the lessons "learned," and events in the various armies between the war. To shed light on the Battle of Britain and the Blitz, he brings you the bombings of London in WWI, and what was thought of that at the time. In many cases, in order to understand why generals and admirals commanded their troops to do certain things, and why certain types of equipment were or were not available, you had to understand the mind set of the time, and the history they were drawing upon.

Another strength of the book is its look at the personalities of the people involved, which as much as anything else helped determine who won or lost. From Churchill to Rommel to Zhukov, you have to understand to an extent their personal motivations, how they interacted with their subordinates and superiors, and the lessons they had learned earlier in life. Churchill for instance was shaped by early life experiences in Cuba prior to the Spanish-American War and during the Boer War, and by his serving as the civilian head of the Royal Navy.

The book is pretty harsh on the British. While clearly liking the British (he is British himself), and greatly impressed by the courage of many of her warriors, again and again he lays into them for shortsightedness, petty infighting, turf wars, and failure to learn from battle.

All and all a good book. Less good for an overall history of the war, but better to understand some of the background of the war, some of the personalites involved, and why the two sides did not do better than they did.

A generation of self-congratulatory propaganda about the Crusade in Europe was rudely jolted by two books written by hard-minded historians. The first, A.J.P. Taylor's The Origins of the Second World War, scythed away the view that Hitler was solely responsible for western Europe's greatest political error. The second is this result of Len Deighton's extensive research on the politics, diplomacy and mechanics of that conflict.

Blood, Tears and Folly may be considered an off-shoot of his other works, both fiction and non-fiction, on the years prior to the war and of the actual fighting. He rightly subtitles this book "An Objective Look" in response to the many years of laudatory histories and memoirs deluging both the reading public and history classrooms. Deighton has a realistic view of history, dealing carefully and dispassionately with the issues at all levels. He knows that success in war is often due to chance decisions. He also knows, and tells us clearly, that the decision-makers must reach their conclusions from an informed and dispassionate foundation. This isn't a common feature among military "leaders" and probably even more rare among politicians dealing in foreign affairs.

This book is more than a journalist's account of an historical period. It's a clarion call to keep a watchful eye on your leaders. Too often, and certainly in the period of this book, long-term policies remain unconsidered while striving to accomplish immediate gains. Prejudices abound, guiding men into foolish decisions for which many will pay the ultimate price.

Deighton appears to be whacking the British here. However, keep in mind that the Empire of Victoria Regina remained the dominant force in the world and the British never tired of saying so. That attitude was the pivotal folly of British politicians, although America's buying into the idea was just as foolish. If anything made World War II inevitable instead of the aberration logic suggests it should be, it's this outlook. The world, particularly Western European nations, resented Britain's arrogance. It had led in large part to World War I. Unable to learn anything from the causes of that conflict, British policies simply repeated old mistakes in new ways, a misplaced pride leading to a new fall.

Deighton manages to carefully balance Britain's short sighted attitude about European affairs with various other elements that will impact the course of the war. He has an exceptional ability to make what ought to be the most mundane topics, machines and technologies, into fascinating elements of the story. Familiar to us now, things like radar and rockets were innovations then and their successes were due to the people working with them. Deighton's ability to delve into the personal viewpoint adds significantly to the enjoyment of this book.

I first read this book as a teenager in the 1960s, graduating from James Bond. After Fleming's action-based thrillers, Deighton was bound to come across as a little elliptical, and my response then was a mixture of bafflement and admiration. I had to read the three subsequent books in the series before I realized that it's a waste of time looking for logical plots in Deighton's work. Perfect plotters are authors who are never diverted by inconsequential things. But Deighton's writing is fuelled by the inconsequential and the peculiar.

George Orwell once noted that Dickens's books are always packed with purposeless detail. Cheeses can't be just "cheeses": they have to be "Gloucester cheeses". His fictional world is very particular, very specific. In the same way, when you get to know Deighton, you are not surprised when his hero stops off at a delicatessen to buy a pound of - no, not just "butter", but "Normandy butter" - and when it goes soft in his pocket before he makes it home, we realize that this hero is a million miles from James Bond.

Departing from the usual profile, Deighton's novels are character-based rather than action-based, and that's both a strength and a weakness. There are any number of slick, factory-produced thrillers around, but a Len Deighton thriller is a hand-made product. The edges are not quite straight, it wobbles when you try to stand it upright, and the doors don't quite fit.

Those who look for a perfect solution to a clearly-stated puzzle should look elsewhere. What we get from Len Deighton is the kind of character-drawing that is traditionally the weakest element in popular thrillers. His descriptions are always arresting and invariably witty. Colonel Ross is described as having "the complexion of a Hovis loaf", and those who have seen a Hovis loaf will recognize the aptness of the image: that of a florid military type who is a little too fond of the bottle. He is also described as a gentleman - which Deighton defines as someone who never drinks gin before 7.30 p.m. and wouldn't hit a lady without first taking his hat off.

If you like that sort of thing, you'll like Len Deighton. He is the Charles Dickens of thriller writers, with the same faults and the same virtues. And The Ipcress File is replete with both. Deighton's shaky and approximate plotting is more than offset by his observant eye for the endless varieties of human strangeness.

Just one thing, though. Deighton is someone who doesn't just write, he re-writes. The care with which he crafts his prose is somehow evident on the page in the look of the sentences and paragraphs. He is a writer, and you should be a reader. So, my advice: forget the cassette. Go for the book.

I couldn't disagree more with the review here that states that this is a terrible book. Len Deighton is quite rightly considered one of the masters of the espionage novel. This is the first of his first series of books, which also included 'Funeral in Berlin', 'Billion Dollar Brain', 'Horse Under Water', and 'An Expensive Place to Die'. Deighton's mastery of dialogue is apparent, along with his ability to make the reader feel a part of the story and era. Deighton's research into contemporary Cold War espionage practices and bureaucracy is superb, as in all his books. Very believable, crisp, and gripping. Highly recommended (if you can find a copy!

Another dissent from the "1" rating below; Len Deighton's first four books (this one, Funeral in Berlin, The Billion Dollar Brain, An Expensive Place to Die) are all very enjoyable. It's true that Deighton appears to draw about equally from Raymond Chandler and Graham Greene, but those are great places to steal from. (Unfortunately, I think Deighton went steeply downhill after these books.)