SS-GB (66)

SS-GB
Len Deighton

Deighton sets a premise that in 1941 Hitler invades Great Britain and wins. The story follows Archer, a Scotland Yard detective with his new Nazi masters. He is investigating a murder which everybody in Berlin is *very* interested in. He slips between the Nazi power brokers and the resistance with equal ease and you are never quite sure which side he is on. Set against the backdrop you learn about life in GB under Nazi occupation. Not quite the police state you might expect.. but more like war time in GB.. rations, curfews, shortages.
I understand that this is one of the great books in the alternative ending genere. Many people criticized Deighton because he was light on details about how England lost the war etc. But that is not the point of the book. It is just the back drop.. by giving few details it leaves it up to the reader to decide what must have happened.
One thing that struck me while I was reading this was the similarity between the main character Douglas Archer and Bernard Sampson lead character of the Game, Set, Match - Hook, Line, Sinker - Hope, Faith, Charity trilogies. SS-GB was written in 1978, five years before Berlin Game came out in 1983 introducing Bernard Sampson. Both characters have lost their wife (Archer loses Jill in a bombing, Sampson's wife defects) and have small children to raise (Archer a son, Sampson son and daughter). Both have "foreign" bosses. Archer has his Nazi masters, and Keller is trying hard to be British, just as Brett, the American tries to be in the Sampson stories. Their techniques seem similar also.. lots of looking things over and trying to figure out what is going on.. moving easily between different opposing groups.. always lots of friends to help out... I think in some ways Archer was the early character development which would become Sampson.