The IPCRESS File   by Den Leighton

James Bond-alike, with less gadgetry and misogyny but more MOD machinations and cleverer plotting. The action scenes do not come across as very punchy, and you only realize there was any significant action after the event. Otherwise a very compelling, ofttimes tongue-in-cheek read.

Regular worker in the British Ministry of Defence (MOD) gets assigned into an elite unit of deniable operatives, and after ostensibly being assigned to track down a missing scientist winds up being kidnapped and put in a mind-washing programme, so that he can join his errant co-workers in spying upon the British government. He manages to escape and name the perpetrators: people very high in the chain of command at the MOD.

Worthy of a deeper reading, but I’m not that interested in the genre and enjoyed it as light entertainment.