Len Deighton - Spy Sinker
Here you can read online Len Deighton - Spy Sinker full text of the book (entire story) in english for free. Download pdf and epub, get meaning, cover and reviews about this ebook. year: 1991, publisher: Grafton Books, genre: Detective and thriller. Description of the work, (preface) as well as reviews are available. Best literature library LitArk.com created for fans of good reading and offers a wide selection of genres:
Romance novel
Science fiction
Adventure
Detective
Science
History
Home and family
Prose
Art
Politics
Computer
Non-fiction
Religion
Business
Children
Humor
Choose a favorite category and find really read worthwhile books. Enjoy immersion in the world of imagination, feel the emotions of the characters or learn something new for yourself, make an fascinating discovery.
- Book:Spy Sinker
- Author:
- Publisher:Grafton Books
- Genre:
- Year:1991
- Rating:3 / 5
- Favourites:Add to favourites
- Your mark:
- 60
- 1
- 2
- 3
- 4
- 5
Spy Sinker: summary, description and annotation
We offer to read an annotation, description, summary or preface (depends on what the author of the book "Spy Sinker" wrote himself). If you haven't found the necessary information about the book — write in the comments, we will try to find it.
Spy Sinker — read online for free the complete book (whole text) full work
Below is the text of the book, divided by pages. System saving the place of the last page read, allows you to conveniently read the book "Spy Sinker" online for free, without having to search again every time where you left off. Put a bookmark, and you can go to the page where you finished reading at any time.
Font size:
Interval:
Bookmark:
The third novel in Deighton's "Hook, Line and Sinker" trilogy. Spanning a ten year period (1977-87), Deighton solves the mystery of Fiona's defection was she a Soviet spy or wasn't she? He also retells some of the events from the "Game, Set and Match" trilogy from Fiona's point of view.
The sixth book in the Bernard Samson series, 1990
Berlin Game, Mexico Set and London Match together cover the period from spring 1983 until spring 1984.
Winter covers 1900 until 1945.
Spy Hook picks up the Bernard Samson story at the beginning of 1987 and Spy Line continues it into the summer of that same year.
Spy Sinker starts in September 1977 and ends in summer 1987. The stories can be read in any order and each one is complete in itself.
England. September 1977.
'Bret Rensselaer, you are a ruthless bastard.' It was his wife's voice. She spoke softly but with considerable force, as if it was a conclusion arrived at after long and difficult reasoning.
Bret half opened his eyes. He was in that hedonistic drowsy half sleep that makes awakening so irksome. But Bret Rensselaer was not a hedonist, he was a puritan; he saw himself as a direct descendant of those God-fearing, unyielding nonconformists who had colonized New England. He opened his eyes. 'What was that?' He looked at the bedside clock.
It was very early still. The room was flooded with sunlight coloured deep yellow by the holland blinds. He could see his wife sitting up in bed, one hand clutching her knee and the other holding a cigarette. She wasn't looking at him. It was as if she didn't know he was there beside her. Staring into the distance she puffed at the cigarette, not letting it go far from her mouth, holding it ready even as she exhaled. The curls of drifting smoke were yellow like the ceiling, and like his wife's face.
'You're utterly cold-blooded,' she said. 'You're in the right job.' She hadn't looked down to see whether he was awake. She didn't care. She was saving the things she was determined to say, things she'd thought a lot about, but never dared say before. Whether her husband heard her or not seemed unimportant.
Without a word of reply, he pushed back the bedclothes and got out of bed. It was not a violent movement. He did it gently so as not to disturb her. She turned her head to watch him go across the carpet. Naked he looked thin, if not to say skinny that was why he looked so elegant in his carefully cut suits. She wished she was skinny too.
Bret went into the bathroom, drew back the curtains and opened the window. It was a glorious autumnal morning. The sunlit trees made long shadows across the gold-tipped grass. He'd not seen the flower-beds so crowded with blooms. At the end of his garden, where the fidgeting boughs of weeping willows fingered the water, the slow-moving river looked almost blue. Two rowing boats tied up at the pier bobbed gently up and down amid a flotilla of dead leaves. He loved this house.
Since the eighteenth century, many wealthy Londoners have favoured such upstream Thameside houses. With grounds that reach the water's edge they are hidden behind anonymous brick walls all the way from Chiswick to Reading. They come in all shapes, sizes and styles from palatial mansions in the Venetian manner to modest three-bedroom residences like this one.
Bret Rensselaer breathed deeply ten times, the way he did before doing his exercises. The view of the garden had reassured him. It always did. He had not always been an Anglophile but once he'd arrived in this bewitching land, he knew there was no escape from the obsessive love he had for everything connected with it. The river that ran at the foot of his garden was not an ordinary little stream; it was the Thames! The Thames with its associations of old London Bridge, Westminster Palace, the Tower, and of course Shakespeare's Globe. Still, after living here for years, he could hardly believe his good fortune. He wished his American wife could share his pleasure but she said England was 'backward' and could only see the bad side of living here.
He stared at himself in the mirror as he combed his hair. He had the same jutting chin and blond hair that his mother had passed on to him and his brother. The same good health too, and that was a priceless legacy. He put on his red silk dressing gown. Through the bathroom door he heard a movement and a clink of glass, and knew it was his wife taking a drink of bottled water. She didn't sleep well. He'd grown used to her chronic insomnia. He was no longer surprised to wake in the night and find her drinking water, smoking a cigarette or reading a chapter of one of her romantic novels.
When he returned to the bedroom she was still there: sitting cross-legged on the bed, her silk nightdress disarranged to expose her thighs, and its lacy shoulder trimming making a ruff behind her head. Her skin was pale she avoided the sun her figure full but not overweight, and her hair tousled. She felt him examining her and she raised her eyes to glare at him. In the past such a pose, that fierce look on her face, and a cigarette in her mouth, had aroused him. Perhaps it was a shameless wanton that he had hoped to discover. If so his hopes had soon been dashed.
He stepped into the alcove that he used as a dressing room and slid open the mirrored wardrobe door to select a suit from the two dozen hanging there, each one in its tissue paper and plastic bag as it had arrived from the cleaners.
'You have no feelings!' she said.
'Don't, Nikki,' he said. Her name was Nicola. She didn't like being called Nikki but it was too late now to tell him so.
'I mean it,' she said. 'You send men out to die as if you were sending out junk mail. You are heartless. I never loved you; no one could.'
What nonsense she spoke. Bret Rensselaer's position at SIS was Deputy Controller of European Economics. Yet it was a shrewd guess, there were times when he had to give the final okay on dangerous jobs. And when those tough decisions were to be made Bret did not shy from making them. 'You left it a darn long time before telling me,' he said reasonably, while hanging a lightweight wool and mohair suit near the light of the window and attaching the braces to the trousers. He screwed up the blue tissue wrapping and tossed it into the linen basket. Then he selected shirt and underclothes. He was worried. In this quarrelsome mood Nikki might blurt out some melodramatic yarn of that kind to the first stranger she came across. She hadn't done such a thing before but he'd never known her in this frame of mind before.
'I've been thinking about it lately,' she replied. Thinking about it a lot.'
'And did this thought process of yours begin before or after last Wednesday's lunch?'
She looked at him coolly and blew smoke before saying, 'Joppi has nothing to do with it. Do you think I would discuss you with Joppi?'
'You have before.' The way she referred to that Bavarian four-flusher by that silly diminutive name made him mad. No matter that just about everyone else did the same.
'That was different. That was years ago. You ran out on me.'
'Joppi is a jerk,' said Bret and was angry with himself for betraying his feelings. He looked at her and knew, not for the first time, murderous anger. He could have strangled her without a remnant of remorse. No matter: he would have the last laugh.
Font size:
Interval:
Bookmark:
Similar books «Spy Sinker»
Look at similar books to Spy Sinker. We have selected literature similar in name and meaning in the hope of providing readers with more options to find new, interesting, not yet read works.
Discussion, reviews of the book Spy Sinker and just readers' own opinions. Leave your comments, write what you think about the work, its meaning or the main characters. Specify what exactly you liked and what you didn't like, and why you think so.