Spy Story (novel) Spy Story (novel) Spy Story is a 1974 spy novel by Len Deighton, which features minor characters from his earlier novels "The IPCRESS File", "Funeral in Berlin", "Horse Under Water", and "Billion Dollar Brain". In common with several of his other early novels, the chapter headings have a "feature". In "Spy Story" these take the form of excerpts from the fictional Studies Centre's rules. As in the earlier "Unnamed hero" novels, we never learn the protagonist's real name, only that he is living under the name Pat Armstrong. Armstrong works for the Studies Centre in London, where various tactical wargame
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