A big thank you to Random House UK, Transworld Publishers, Bantam Press and Netgalley for the opportunity to read and review this book. I loved the last three books he had written in the Kate Henderson series so was very excited to be invited to read Tom Bradby's latest book. Their relationship has never recovered since Harry's wife's suicide, for which Sean holds his father responsible. And Harry, with his career on the verge of disintegration, needs to find him and put things right. Yesterday’s Spy opens in a bierkeller in Gottingen, Germany in 1933. Young Cambridge student Amanda James gets on the wrong side of a drunken and bellicose Nazi gang toasting the glories of new Reich. If not for the intervention of fellow Brit Harry Tower things could get very nasty for Amanda. Curiously, the whole time the conflict is happening Harry has the feeling a man is watching him, assessing his actions. In the coming years, Harry marries Amanda, they have a son, Sean, and Harry begins working for SIS. Deighton's spy novels are very low-key affairs with muted details that might go by you until pointed out by the protagonist. Often events will occur that seem to have no relevancy until later. To me it seems that not much will happen until the last third, but in retrospect much is happening. It's just that you're forced to see things from the protagonist's viewpoint and that character (like all of us) is in a situation in which he is being forced to act without knowing all the facts. While many might find it frustrating there are times when I enjoy this slower paced approach. It forces me to think a bit more instead of just mindlessly going along for the ride.

I read this shortly after reading the highly acclaimed John Le Carre novel "Tinker, Tailor Soldier, Spy" and it took me a while for me to separate this book from that one, particularly the main character Harry Tower who would fit right in the Le Carre novel. I liked this much better than Tinker, Tailor, Solider Spy. Riveting...with style and energy, evocative scene-setting and strong characterisation' Financial TimesHe also wrote travel guides and became travel editor of Playboy, before becoming a film producer. After producing a film adaption of his 1968 novel Only When I Larf, Deighton and photographer Brian Duffy bought the film rights to Joan Littlewood and Theatre Workshop's stage musical Oh, What a Lovely War! He had his name removed from the credits of the film, however, which was a move that he later described as "stupid and infantile." That was his last involvement with the cinema. TOM BRADBY is a novelist, screenwriter and journalist. He has written nine previous novels, including top-ten bestselling Secret Service, and its two sequels , Double Agent and Triple Cross. The Master of Rain was shortlisted for the Crime Writers Association Steel Dagger for Thriller of the Year, and both The White Russian and The God of Chaos for the CWA Historical Crime Novel of the Year. He adapted his first novel, Shadow Dancer, into a film, the script for which was nominated for Screenplay of the Year in the Evening Standard Film Awards. All the characters are very well crafted as is the storyline. There really is something for everyone, the intrigue you would expect in a Spy Thriller, plenty of action as Shahnaz finds out that Harry really is pretty handy in tight situations, guilt and introspection from Harry all too aware of the people he has hurt in his lifetime plus a ringside view of what a coup d'etat is like in the middle of 1950's Tehran. On August 19, 1953, Iranian Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddegh was overthrown in a coup d’etat jointly planned by the United States and Great Britain and led on the ground by the CIA. With the support of the country’s leading mullah, Abol-Ghasem Kashani, Americans under the command of Kermit Roosevelt, Jr. restored Mohammad Shah Reza Pahlavi as Iran’s supreme leader. The shah’s brutal, dictatorial regime during the following two decades led directly to the 1979 Iranian Revolution that still echoes in today’s headlines. Now, British journalist Tom Bradby recalls the events of 1953 in Yesterday’s Spy, a fast-paced spy thriller loosely based on the history of the coup. Nothing good ever comes from a midnight phone call, especially from Downing Street. For washed-up spy Harry Tower, it is the worst news at the worst possible time. His son, Sean, has gone missing in troubled Iran after writing an exposé about government corruption.

Deception has a nasty habit of eating away at people. Lying about your job to your family and neighbors. Lying to your co- workers about the work that you are doing. Lying about the work to your government who is lying about the work they don't want to know what you are doing. Lying to yourself about the importance of what you do, though all everything that exists around you is built up on a very precarious pedestal, and can fall all away with just one truth. Tom Bradby in the historical thriller Yesterday's Son shows the price of deception on one man and his attempt to fix a legacy of wrongs for his only son's safety. The guesswork continues through the story, with deception coming on deception. And of course the ending is, in different ways, both climax and anticlimax. As with the best spy stories success is mingled with failure, and this results in the question of what ultimately has been achieved? Loose ends are tied up of course, but in a satisfactory way. The narrative works on a very human level, and the reader can respond to that quite happily. Sinister rumors link clandestine Arab arms dealing with the man who led the old anti-Nazi Guernica network. It's time to re-open the master file on yesterday's spy…' Len Deighton's ‘Yesterdays Spy' is the subject of the latest Brush Pass Review on SpybraryIn Yesterday’s Spy we have the prospect of a Soviet mole in London but the real interest is based in Iran and the behind the scenes string pulling to maintain British and American interests while thwarting the expansion of communism and the threat of nations being drawn under a Soviet influence. I have enjoyed each of the Tom Bradby novels I have read so far and would certainly recommend this one. Not only is this a finely crafted spy novel, I also learned something about the 1953 coup in Iran. Names and countries may differ, but political duplicity seems to be one constant in international affairs. This is a love story because it’s about Harry and Amanda and Sean and Shahnaz. Amanda committed suicide and Bradby blends her story into the relationship between father and son very skilfully. Can Harry not only find Sean but reconcile with him about the family’s past? Both this and the spy story work.

The narrator was Champion's second in command during the war, and has continued to work for "the Department" ever since. So he seems the obvious person to use to infiltrate Champion's scheme, though he is not keen to do it and the fact that he is the obvious choice makes it harder for him to convince Champion of his sincerity. (And, once he has done so, to ensure that his employers still believe he is on their side.) Generally this is familiar Len Deighton territory; the narrator's character is little different from that of the narrator of Spy Story. (He actually has the same boss, though he doesn't seem to work in the same branch of intelligence at all.) Len Deighton is one of my favorite authors, although he has been responsible for one or two spy yarns whose plots were so byzantine I was never able to decipher them -- I'm thinking particularly of Horse Under Water. Before long, he is on the run—not only from a faceless enemy, but from his own past. Which will catch up with him first? Yesterday's Spy has the usual sorts of betrayals and seemingly inexplicable plot turns of the other Deighton books, with all not being explained until the final chapter. It does lean towards several of the James Bond-like tropes of the Ian Fleming books and film adaptations. There is the somewhat charming evil villain. There are the several femme fatales. There is the villain's lair which is infiltrated by the hero. There is the somewhat absurd final confrontation of the single hero vs. the overwhelming forces of the bad guys. So it was more of an 'it was ok' sort of book, compared to earlier, more anti-James Bond, type of books. The highlights of the book are the evocative descriptions of Tehran in 1953, which ring true to an outsider like me, and Bradby’s well developed characters, especially his moving portrayal of Harry as a man trying to come to terms with his life and failings. The book also interestingly brings to life long forgotten episodes of international political duplicity that still resonate today.

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Sean vanished after his car was involved in an incident at a small village, there are signs of a struggle and a crash. With the help of Shahnaz, Sean’s girlfriend, the daughter of a general friendly to the Shah’s cause, Harry sets about navigating the local quagmire for the truth. Did Sean upset the city’s police chief, were his articles critical of the regime his downfall and where do the Russians figure in all this? Harry has his own secrets and all he has to go on is a cryptic note left on Sean’s desk. The characterisations were adequate for a spy novel. Since the main feature of the book is based on catching and stopping the villain from carrying out his villainy, detailed characterisation was unnecessary and mercifully not provided. Harry Towers is a spy with British intelligence who has reached the end of his career, and has also lost his wife to suicide, and his son to both neglect and apathy. Harry receives a call from that his son has gone missing in Iran, a country that Harry had some dealings with in the past, and knows from current work at his job, is ripe for revolution. With American help. Harry travels to Iran, finding the country much worse than he expected, and also much more dangerous. For his son was writing articles about powerful people, who might not like what is being said about them. The more Harry digs the more he wonders if the many sins of his past are catching up with him, and that he and his son are in much more danger than he thought.