Spy Hook forms the start of a second trilogy of books in the "Bernie Samson" series by Len Deighton; the previous book, which ended the first trilogy, was London Match, which I finished reading a few months ago and wrote:

I think I'll take a (long) break before resuming the nonalogy of these books, but I'm happy to have blitzed through the first three: they were both gripping and rewarding, and Bernard Samson makes for a delight.

I wrote in that book's review that there was a whiff of the workplace sit-com in reading the trilogy; there is a realism and propulsion in these books, and in unwinding the narrative and realpolitik, but also a deep comfort in checking in with your ol' pals in MI5 and the Berlin field unit. This sense of — for lack of a better term — amity (reminiscient of Slow Horses as well) is a nice contrast from the work of le Carré whose theses is often about the transactional and callous nature of this work, and yet the repetition started to hit me a little bit with this one: how many times can Bernie accuse and then vindicate the same colleague? How many times can we be surprised by one of Werner's romantic flings?

Add to this the sense that — more than any of the preceding three books — Spy Hook is not a self-contained story. It is perhaps an overlong first act, but there is no satisfying conclusion beyond a Dumas-esque "gotta read the next one!" ending. And, of course, read the next one I will — but besides getting to chat again with our old friends at the office, it's hard for me to say that I learned or picked up anything new from this book that I hadn't from the originals.

★★★