Len Deighton Obituary: Len Deighton: How The Observer's Cookery Cartoonist Became a Master Spy Writer

Spy thriller author dead at 97

LONDON — Len Deighton, a prolific writer whose tough, stylish spy thrillers featured on bestseller lists for decades, has died. He was 97.

British spy novelist Len Deighton dies

He created a sardonic working-class spy in the 1962 novel The Ipcress File.

Obituary: Len Deighton, hugely successful author who reinvented the spy thriller with his Harry Palmer novels

Len Deighton, who has died aged 97, was acclaimed “the poet of the spy novel”, having almost single-handedly rescued spy fiction from the flashy, tuxedo-clad, womanising, snobbish and, some said, sadistic world of James Bond and re­fashioning it into something grittier and more realistic.

Len Deighton, creator of the 'anti-Bond', dies at 97

British writer Len Deighton, who created the sardonic working-class spy played by Michael Caine in the 1965 Cold War film "The Ipcress File", has died, his literary agent said Tuesday. Deighton "passed away peacefully on Sunday" aged 97, his literary agent said in a statement, calling him "one of the greatest spy and thriller writers of the twentieth century". Deighton's thick-bespectacled, rough-edged spy provided an antidote to the debonair na…

British spy novelist Len Deighton dies at 97

Len Deighton, the prolific British spy novelist whose best-selling books of betrayal and deception skewered espionage services in the East and the West, and...