Originally published on my blog here in January 2004.The fourth Harry Palmer novel (in which he is still an unnamed narrator; the name was given him for the films) is the most dated of all of them. It relies on a plot device straight from James Bond or even The Man From UNCLE - the network of agents run by a computer. The novel begins with a Finnish journalist making waves when he starts investigating what he thinks is a massive British Secret Service operation in Finland - but there isn't one, so Palmer and his superiors want to find out just what he has stumbled across. The trail leads to a private army, assembled by a rabidly anti-Communist American billionaire, whose technicians have built the computer (in typical sixties style, one which fills several floors of a large building) to run the group's operations.In the end, the computer is relatively unimportant, but it certainly does mark out Billion-Dollar Brain as a product of its time. As a spy thriller, though, the novel is something of a let-down for other reasons, which may well be why Deighton abandoned his Palmer character at this point. Indeed, it seems as though he has already, because almost all the quirkiness which marks the earlier novels is by now missing. By comparison with the earlier writing, it fails to be more than a run of the mill spy thriller. While still of the opinion that this is Deighton's poorest novel, it doesn't seem as bad this time around as I remember it (the computer plays a smaller part than I recalled, which may be part of the reason that this is the case). Nevertheless, it is still at least as good as its forgotten contemporaries - of which it would probably have been one without Deighton's name attached.
really enjoyed this book I think the backdrop of cold war paranoia appealed to me as I remembered much of that when growing up in the seventies and eighties and how it fed into popular culture in the form of Bond movies and Frankie goes to Hollywood videos to name but two!!This is a well-written book and is darker than some spy treatments of the time,there are twists aplenty yet the plot never becomes muddled in itself.it's a book in some ways low in sensation but high in espionage plotting and it ends in some ways with a whimper rather than a bang..strangely this doesn't affect the book adversely as it enables it to remain realistic in feel.the copy I had was an old well thumbed penguin copy barely hanging onto any semblance of life..that said its a novel I will pass on to be thumbed through and sellotaped a few last times as its well worth discovery.
What do You think about Billion Dollar Brain (1984)?
The technological innovation in the supercomputer which puts it a quantum jump ahead of all the competition is that it uses base 10 arithmetic rather than binary. Yeah, right.
—Manny
Not my favourite of the four unnamed agent books, but still a very good read. The film was spoilt by being over the top in parts, but beautifully filmed in others!This was one of the books that Deighton introduced an error, intentional I assume, concerning drinks.The characters Newbegin, Signe and the unnamed agent, start off with a whisky in chapter 3.One page on Newbegin finishes his vodka with no mention inbetween, of a change.Another book describes two characters drinking Dutch gin, they finish, the glasses are washed up and put away. A few paragraphs later one of the characters finishes his drink, again!
—Tim
