GREAT DETECTIVES & PEOPLE OF MYSTERY #65
HARRY PALMER
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Len Deighton, the English author of espionage thrillers, created a series which involves a man of the working class in Burnley who dislikes and distrusts everyone in authority. He is nameless in the books but is popularly known as Harry Palmer because he was given that name in the films based on the novels. "The IPCRESS File" published in 1962 is told in the first-person, and the secret agent is anonymous. At one point he is greeted by someone saying "Hello, Harry", to which he thinks, "Now my name isn't Harry, but in this business it's hard to remember whether it ever had been." Harry is described as working class, living in a back street flat and seedy hotels, and shopping in supermarkets. He wears glasses, is hindered by bureaucracy, and craves a pay raise.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Len Deighton was born in London, educated at the Royal Academy of Art, and has held a variety of jobs. He was an assistant pastry cook at the Royal Festival Hall, which resulted in his syndicated column on cooking and a 1965 book, "Len Deighton's Cookstrip Cook Book". He was a waiter in Piccadilly, was in advertising in London and New York, a teacher in Brittany, was employed as a magazine artist and as a news photographer. He also worked in the RAF's Special Investigation Branch. His vast knowledge of exotic locales and military history is evident in the realistic details of his complex spy novels, which are written with footnotes and appendixes. Although Deighton claims that he prefers a small, devoted audience rather than a large following, his suspenseful accounts of the Cold War have become highly successful and popular as books and films. He has become considered a poet of the spy novel, providing a detailed picture of the world of espionage while examining the ethics and morality of that world.
1962 "The IPCRESS File"/ 1963 "Horse Under Water"/ 1964 "Funeral in Berlin"/ 1966 "The Billion Dollar Brain"/ 1967 "An Expensive Place to Die" (Playboy Dec. 1966-Feb. 1967)/ 1974 "Spy Story"/ 1976 "Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Spy"
FILMS
"The Ipcress File" Universal, 1965. Michael Caine (Harry Palmer), Nigel Green, Guy Doleman, Sue Lloyd. Director: Sidney J. Furie. To stay out of jail after his black market activities have been uncovered, Palmer is drafted into British espionage. He discovers that a behind-the-Iron Curtain brainwashing cell is actually located in the heart of London and unmasks a particularly well-entrenched double agent.
"Funeral in Berlin" Paramount, 1966. Caine, Eva Renzi, Paul Hubschmid, Oscar Homolka. Director: Guy Hamilton. Reluctant Palmer is assigned to help a top Russian officer defect to the West from his Berlin post by smuggling him out in a coffin, only to discover that the funeral will not be a simple one.
"Billion Dollar Brain" United Artists, 1967. Caine, Karl Malden, Ed Begley, Homolka, Francoise Dorleac. Director: Ken Russell. Palmer, now an unsuccessful private detective, grudgingly allows himself to be lured back into the British Secret Service. He becomes involved with virus-laden eggs and a violently anti-Communist American multimillionaire who is planning a computer-directed private invasion of Latvia carried out by an army of tanks moving across a frozen sea.
"Spy Story" 1976. Michael Petrovitch (Patrick Armstrong), Tessa Wyatt, Don Fellows. Director: Lindsay Shonteff. A British spy is framed, so he must evade the KGB, the CIA, and British Intelligence to reach the heart of the conspiracy in the Arctic. In this film the hero's name is changed to Patrick Armstrong.
TELEVISION
"Bullet to Beijing" Showtime, August 16, 1995. Caine (Palmer), Jason Connery, Mia Sara, Michael Sarrazin, Michael Gambon, Sue Lloyd. Director: George Mihalka. Not based on any story by Len Deighton. A stolen biological weapon begins a high-stakes game of kill or be killed.
"Midnight in St. Petersburg" Showtime, February 14, 1996. Caine, Connery, Tanya Jackson, Sarrazin, Gambon. Director: Douglas Jackson. Sequel to "Bullet to Beijing", also not by Deighton. Harry must find 1000 grams of weapons-grade plutonium stolen from the Russian government.
"The Ipcress File" ITV, 2022. Joe Cole (Harry), Lucy Boynton, Tom Hollander. Director: James Watkins. Six episode series that aired March 6 to April 10, 2022. This Cold War spy thriller is set in 1963, with small-time crook and blackmarketeer Harry Palmer offered a job in British Intelligence as a way out of Colchester Prison.
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Talking of Len Deighton I wonder what Ian Fleming or John le Carré would have thought of the latest Ipcress File TV series. They allegedly occasionally met up with Len Deighton but alas their meetings ended in arguments about who was best equipped to write the most realistic books. It's a shame all three focused on fiction. Fiction, fiction, fiction ... why are so many spy novels thus? Factual novels enable the reader to research more about what’s in the novel in press cuttings, history books etc and such research can be as rewarding and compelling as reading an enthralling novel.
ReplyDeleteFurthermore, if even just marginally autobiographical, the author has the opportunity to convey the protagonist’s genuine hopes and fears as opposed to hypothetical stuff any author can dream up about say what it feels like to avoid capture. A good example of a "real" raw noir espionage thriller is the first novel in The Burlington Files series. Its protagonist, Bill Fairclough aka Edward Burlington, was of course a real as opposed to a celluloid spy and has even been likened to a "posh and sophisticated Harry Palmer". Apparently Bill Fairclough once contacted John le Carré in 2014 to do a collaboration. John le Carré replied "Why should I? I've got by so far without collaboration so why bother now?" A realistic response from a famous expert in fiction but maybe because Fairclough's MI6 handler knew Kim Philby + Oleg Gordievsky.