Preposterous and boring
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HOOK and LINE are both good spy thrillers in their own right, even if their overarching effect is to ruin the story that GAME SET and MATCH told so well by revealing that...well, read them and see. SPY SINKER is a different animal altogether. Deighton drops the first-person Bernard Samson point of view to retell the entire story from Berlin Game onwards from an omniscient angle. It is, therefore, a) dull, because we know everything which is going to happen anyway, only it was actually exciting the first time, and b) a redundant exercise in tying up loose ends and trying to explain away some of the more far-fetched consequences of HOOK and LINE (one character we thought was speaking in an earlier book, it is revealed, was actually impersonated by someone else (who we never met) who was good at mimicking voices. Right.) What is more, without the plot to keep you distracted, and with the best characters such as Bernard Samson and Dicky Cruyer written into the background, it is only in Spy Sinker that you notice what a rotten writer of prose Deighton is, and most of the funniest lines come when he thinks his way into Fiona's head: "he made her feel deeply feminine in a way she had never experienced before" (p122). Of course the real joke on the whole intelligence community was that when the Wall came down, noone, not even the CIA or SIS actually expected it. This would have been a sweet irony to end the series on, but Deighton tries to use his new vantage point of hindsight to make it look as if British Intelligence planned it all along. Nice try. That could be the perfect metaphor for Spy Sinker: a poor attempt to rewrite history that fails to convince.
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Superb; a new perspective which answers so many questions
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When I first discovered the context and timing of Deighton's 'Sinker' I was, to say the least, puzzled. Although technically the third book in the Hook, Line, Sinker trilogy, its beginnings are a decade before the first two books. However, while the book could stand alone on its own merits, its place in the trilogy makes it into so much more. Though those who have read the first two books of the trilogy will know much of the way the story will twist and turn, there are still many surprises and revelations of the kind of which Deighton is the master. 'Sinker', written from a different perspective to the other Bernard Samson novels, answers many of the questions posed throughout the saga which could not have been revealed otherwise. Indeed, many of the revelations answer questions which the reader would hardly have noticed when reading the earlier novels. Those who have also read 'Winter' will gain all the more from the privilege - as is the case any of the Samson novels. Friends and foes alike return to enthrall the reader, and much more is learnt of all - the detached Anglophile Bret Rensellaer, warm yet dark Uncle Silas, the ever resouceful and loyal Werner Wolkmann, the doddering D-G, Stinnes the KGB Major and Fiona Samson, never short of a surprise. All in all the book is of class which few but Deighton can acheive, and draws you into a very personal level. A book I would recommend without hesitation to anyone.
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Exciting finale to a riviting trilogy
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Sampson's wife Fiona now upwardly mobile in the East German intelligence apparatus, is beginning to feel the strain of her years as a triple agent. With increasing KGB surveillence, the longing for her children, and isolation from people she knows and trusts, the decision is made to bring her home. When Fiona arrives at the rendezvous accompanied by her two KGB watchers, Bernard quickly dispatches them. However, Fiona's sister Tessa, who has for some unexplained reason come with Bernard, is killed in the crossfire.
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