[SS-GB] asks a familiar question—what would it have been like if the Germans had won the war?—and gives it a characteristically exciting and straightforward answer…. It's amazing that someone who writes as badly as Deighton can keep a story so steadily on the boil. There are two things he knows a lot about and keeps reminding you he knows a lot about: the German army and the geography of London. All the rest seems to have been put together from colour supplements and the backs of cornflakes packets—the art-historical conversations, for example ('You've got a wonderful little Turner watercolour there, Superintendent … Not many people realise that Turner could work to that degree of realism'), the Bernimenu descriptions of food and drink ('Kellerman took his time in preparing coffee topped with a large dollop of cream and dusted with a little powdered chocolate'), the journalistic short cuts ('The bomb exploded … scattering bits of the dismembered film crew into nearby Waterlow Park'). But it genuinely rattles along, with a bit of sex here and a bit of violence there and a new mystery every few pages right up to the end.