This is the first posting on this blog, and comes shortly after Len Deighton celebrated his 80th birthday on 18th February. I'm a huge fan of Len's work - books and films adapted from them - and last year I set up a website, The Deighton Dossier, which is currently the most comprehensive - and only regularly updated - website devoted to his work. I did it primarily in response to the fact that, in comparison to Ian Fleming's Bond - about which there are hundreds of websites - the stories and characters created by Deighton are very under-represented.
Len's 80th birthday provides an opportunity to bring him back out of the cold, so to speak, as he enjoys his retirement in Portugal and Guernsey (he's not lived in the UK for over forty years). As part of that celebration, Shots, the online magazine for thriller and spy fiction has created a special Len Deighton Appreciation on their website....and asked me to provide a fan's perspective on why his work continues to appeal to fiction fans across the globe.
