Game, Set and Match

Len Deighton's Berlin Game. Bit of a pot boiler but the Ipcress File and the Game, Set and Match trilogy have a more realistic, cynical and urbane approach to spy shenanigans than the James Bond industry and we haven't come very far from a world in which the American President is quoted mysteriously as saying 'I am a jam doughnut'. This geopolitical trail has taken me to John Le Carre, Robert Harris and more recently the excellent but exhaustive historical podcasts of Dan Carlin.