The IPCRESS File

Len Deighton’s best-selling first spy novel which revolutionised the genre, now published in Penguin Classics for the first time

A high-ranking scientist has been kidnapped. A secret British intelligence agency must find out why. But as the quarry is pursued from grimy Soho to the other side of the world, what seemed a straightforward mission turns into something far more sinister.

With its sardonic, cool, working-class hero, Len Deighton’s sensational debut The IPCRESS File rewrote the spy thriller and became the defining novel of 1960’s London.