Book review: Funeral in Berlin

Funeral in Berlin is perhaps the classic of the early Deightons. Wiki says: Funeral in Berlin is a 1964 spy novel by Len Deighton set between Saturday 5 October and Sunday 10 November 1963. It was the third of Deighton's novels about an unnamed British agent. It was preceded by The IPCRESS File (1962) and Horse Under Water (1963), and followed by Billion-Dollar Brain (1966).

My pic is of my copy; I don't think I'm responsible for the ink blot. Not that there are no submachine guns in the book.

The plot concerns a nominal attempt to arrrange the defection of a soviet scientist; but actually to recover valuables in a Swiss account owned by Broum; but who is Broum? The plot consists of Our Hero exploring the situation and gradually unravelling a genuinely interesting story.

Sometimes there's an impression of individually written scenes not totally fitting together. For example the Hendaye bit: it is all very nice, but it isn't clear how he, Vulkan or Steele got there from Berlin; or indeed why Vulkan went there instead of directly to Spain. But mostly the joins are not too obvious, and certainly on first reading it flows by; all rather confusing, but becomes clear at the end.

The interviews with death camp survivors works I think; and the whole evocation of that not-long-post WWII period also works. The world-weary spy going along with the naive young bunnies also works; the relationship with Stok is perhaps just a little too chummy, but can be excused; and Stok is a good character; indeed the book is full of them.