Len Deighton's latest spy story has a totally implausible plot full of anti-communist fanatics, double agents and a computer which gives the operatives their instructions. It thankfully contains a large measure of wry humor and skepticism which help the listener appreciate the spoof. Paul Daneman takes on the international cast of British, Russian and American characters like old friends. His wide range of accents identify each speaker though the women and children sound a bit silly with squeaky voices. Daneman's pace follows the action and he performs with a polished smoothness and professionalism. R.F.W. (c)AudioFile, Portland, Maine
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
Review
The Billion Dollar Brain belongs to a powerful private intelligence unit and the data Deighton has programmed it with is much more fantastically complex than anything he used in The Ipcress File or Funeral in Berlin. Actually it's Goldfinger gadgetry. It begins with the attempt to unscramble some eggs which are smeared on the body of a Finnish journalist in Helsinki; it ends with the defection of a free-lancing American agent to Russia; and it includes, on a breathless tracer from London to Leningrad to New York, a rigid Russian Colonel Stok, a kittenish tiger, a mad Rightist playing his game of world monopoly at an installation in Texas, and of course the impervious "I" who tells the story which starts with a real stopper - "It was the morning of my hundredth birthday." ...... We're not computing - this kind of entertainment is just as much a matter of timing as taste - but Deighton's electronic tinkertoy is Smersh-ingly good fun, a bang up, bang bang affair. (Kirkus Reviews)
