Funeral in Berlin Funeral in Berlin Funeral in Berlin is a 1964 spy novel by Len Deighton set between Saturday October 5th and Sunday November 10th 1963. It was the third of four novels about an unnamed British agent. It was preceded by "The IPCRESS File" (1962) and "Horse Under Water" (1963), and followed by "Billion-Dollar Brain" (1966). The protagonist, who is unnamed, travels to Berlin to arrange the defection of a Soviet scientist named Semitsa, this being brokered by Johnny Vulkan of the Berlin intelligence community. Despite the protagonist's initial scepticism, the deal seems to have the support of Russian security-chief Colonel
Harry Palmer been theorised that the protagonist in another of Deighton's spy novels, "An Expensive Place to Die" (1967), also written in the first-person-anonymous narrative, is also 'Harry Palmer'; however, differences in characterisation and plotting indicate this is someone else other than Palmer. "The IPCRESS File" novel came out just after the release of the first James Bond film "Dr. No" (1962). When the novel reached best-seller status, Eon producers Harry Saltzman and Albert Broccoli approached Deighton to write the script for the second Bond film, "From Russia With Love" (1963). Little of Deighton's screenplay was actually used on the shoot. Saltzman