Len Deighton’s characters seem so real to me that I feel as if I’m reading non-fiction–he’s not making up people but merely describing individuals who exist.

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Bernard Samson, the British intelligence agent in the Game, Set, Match Trilogy (Berlin Game, Mexico Set, London Match), is a perfect example. The same is true of Samson’s colleagues, his friends, his wife and his father-in-law. When Samson’s children come into danger, it’s not cheap exploitation for suspense as you see in generic thrillers. His kids’ peril is perfectly plausible. It could really happen.

The trilogy was written in the early 1980s before the fall of the Berlin Wall. When I read the books recently, I was absorbed into Samson’s world, turning pages every night into the early morning, eager to find out what would happen to these people. Finally, when I had no choice but to go to bed, I couldn’t sleep. Instead, I would lie there, practicing a conversation I was going to have with Bernard Samson the next day, as if I was really going to have it, assuring him that he didn’t have to worry because in only a few more years the Cold War would be over and his problems, though not solved, would be alleviated. After an hour and a half of this, I would have to remind myself that there is no Bernard Samson, I wouldn’t be having a discussion with him the next day or ever.

Most of all, I’d tell myself. Len Deighton is a brilliant writer.

Max Eastern is the author of the modern noir thriller The Gods Who Walk Among Us.