by Len Deighton
Deighton's latest spy novel is right on top of the news. London Match takes up with Deighton's British field agent, Bernard Samson, still trying to win over his superiors: Just because his wife defected to the Russians, it doesn't mean he isn't a straight arrow himself. Samson has succeeded in getting a top Soviet spy to defect to London, but no one wants to let Samson do the debriefing. This novel touches on the egos and power plays of Samson's bosses—and a slimy bunch they are. The main plot, however, is amazingly like that of the current Yurchenko case, in which a top Soviet KGB agent, after defecting to the U.S., decides to go home. Was he a plant? Deighton's fictional KGB man comes near to destroying the entire British operation in London, but Samson catches on just in the nick of time. London Match is slow starting, but after 100 or so pages, it becomes a real gripper. Give Deighton a gold star for timing. (Knopf, $17.95)
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