[In The Ipcress File] Len Deighton has combined picaresque satire, parody, and suspense and produced a hybrid more humorous than thrilling. Inevitably, his comedic attack on modern espionage agencies and his burlesque of the fictional techniques of Ambler, Fleming, and Greene reduce the intensity and intrigue of his narrative. But even in itself his tale of espionage lacks distinction, and, despite some revelatory material on "brainwashing," its familiarity breeds boredom. Fortunately, the story seems less important than the comedy.

Deighton's plot, while using the customary obfuscation of the genre, is relatively simple…. If [the] conventional narrative details are in part Deighton's burlesque of espionage fiction, they seem too often to be working both sides of the street. Moreover, his disclosure of the "inside man" is clearly intended as a part of the suspense, and yet it is as stereotyped as the material being parodied.

Where Deighton allows his...