Billion-Dollar Brain (1966, ISBN 0099857103) is a spy novel by Len Deighton. It was adapted into a 1967 movie directed by Ken Russell and starring Michael Caine.

Billion-Dollar Brain is the fourth, and final, of Len Deighton's novel series (often: the Harry Palmer novels) featuring the anonynous, secret agent protagonist working for the British intelligence agency, the W.O.O.C.(P); the cinematic, Harry Palmer, name is from the three adaptations (The Ipcress File, Funeral in Berlin, Billion Dollar Brain). Like many of Len Deighton's other novels, the plot of Billion Dollar Brain is intricate, with many noir_style dead ends; the film is not faithful to the plot and characters of the novel.

The eponymous billion-dollar brain is a 1960s supercomputer, operated by a private (amateur) American intelligence agency known as "Facts for Freedom" (FFF), run by General Midwinter. The Brain is used to optimize the operations of the FFF's agents. The FFF plan the overthrow of Soviet power in Latvia, as a test-case for the ultimate destabilisation, and downfall, of Communism. British secret agent Harry Palmer is instructed to penetrate an FFF cell operating from Finland.

The main Finland FFF operative, Harvey Newbegin—is a traitor, running a phantom network of agents (pocketing the money supplied to fund it), while passing-on information to the Soviets, and betraying American FFF agents to British Harry Palmer's old, Russian adversary, Colonel Stok, of KGB (from the previous novel, Funeral in Berlin). Meanwhile, FFF agents have infiltrated the Microbiological Research Establishment at Porton Down, England, and are stealing a virus (transported in eggs). The agents believe the virus is destined for FFF, in America, but Harvey Newbegin is attempting to pass it to the Soviets.

In the excellent, cinematic Billion Dollar Brain, the retired Harry Palmer is blackmailed into returning to work for the British secret service as a double agent. He is to infiltrate an American_financed, ultra_ right_wing group dedicated to liberating Latvia from the Soviet Union, and, most important, to recover the virus_incubating eggs for the West. The screenplay's plot relies heavily upon the sophisticated computer system with which the right_wing group controls its anti_Soviet, spy network in Latvia.

Billion Dollar Brain follows The Ipcress File and Funeral in Berlin.

External links

• IMDB on Billion Dollar Brain (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0061405/)