Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Spy

Name: Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Spy
Rating: 4.3 (302 reviews)

by Len Deighton Book 7 in the Harry Palmer series.

First published 1976

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4.2(302)

A Soviet scientist with ambitions far beyond ordinary military research appears ready to defect to the West. A British agent and an American intelligence officer are assigned to handle the case, but the scientist’s value makes him the centre of competing plans involving the CIA, Soviet security and private agendas that are never fully declared.

The pursuit crosses borders and alliances while the agent tries to determine whether the defection is genuine, manipulated or deliberately impossible to interpret. Deighton uses the scientific ambitions of the space age to widen the familiar spy game, linking personal mistrust to the technological and strategic competition of the later Cold War.