Samson undergoes sacrifice in his duties and is often ignored by his superiors, being passed over for promotion or sent to Berlin during Christmas.
Like Deighton's earlier unnamed spy character ("Harry Palmer" in the film adaptations), Samson is cynical and has a disrespect for his superiors and any ambitious colleagues.
Bernard grew up in post-war Berlin before the wall was built and received a typical German education rather than a privileged English one and never went to university.
Bernard quit being a Berlin field agent after a mission in which a friend was killed and he was lucky to escape to the West alive.
Bernard hoped to get the German Desk but was passed over for Dicky Cruyer, an Oxford man with no field experience.
The true nature of his character can be gleaned from reading between the lines, or alternatively from the sixth novel, Spy Sinker, which recounts the events of the previous books from a third-person perspective, and casts doubt upon Bernard's reliability as a narrator, especially in his assessment of his colleagues' capabilities and motives.
[5] Filmed on location in Berlin and Mexico, the project included a large international cast with 3,000 extras and a budget of $8 million.
[4] In February 2008, director Quentin Tarantino expressed interest in developing the Game, Set and Match trilogy as a three-hour film.