Frankly, I'm not quite sure what to make of … Len Deighton, an experienced frogman who has worked for the Special Investigation Branch of the R.A.F. I'll agree with Symons that he "has a sharp realism about motives that is very much to my own taste." He also has a wry, dry and highly individual manner—as well as a highly individual approach to punctuation and grammar. But I find his storytelling episodic, even desultory. It takes him almost half of this long book ["The Ipcress File"] to get his anonymous agent—working for something known as W.O.O.C.(P)—involved in a forward-moving plot. Still, this spasmodic pointlessness is (I think) part of Deighton's picture of what espionage is really like; it carries conviction, and the narrator's detached and sardonic attitude is refreshing.

Anthony Boucher, "Criminals at Large: 'The Ipcress File'," in The New...