Harry Palmer 'Palmer', 'Tommy Palmer'. So, he said, 'All right, we'll call him Harry Palmer.'" Len Deighton introduced the lead character in "The IPCRESS File", his first novel, published in November 1962. In that first-person novel, the secret agent is anonymous, although at one point he is greeted by someone saying "Hello, Harry"; he later says, "Now my name isn't Harry, but in this business it's hard to remember whether it ever had been." Deighton's spy is described as working class, living in a back street flat and seedy hotels, and shopping in supermarkets. He wears glasses, is hindered by bureaucracy, and
Spy Story (novel) and no menace." Bell said that "evasive indirection has been Deighton's trademark since his first spy novel, The Ipcress File, appeared in 1963. At the time, his obsessive reliance on the blurred and intangible, on loaded pauses and mysteriously disjointed dialogue, did convey the shadowy meanness of the spy's world, with its elusive loyalties, camouflaged identities and weary brutality. But Deighton's later efforts have bloated these cryptic and inscrutable mannerisms into a dense fog of unknowing." A film adaptation starring Michael Petrovitch as Pat Armstrong was released in 1976, directed by Lindsay Shonteff. Spy Story (novel) Spy Story is a