Horse Under Water
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Product Description
Review
‘Lively, exciting, ingenious’
Observer
‘Quite marvellous… funny too’ Punch
A master of fictional espionage.’ Daily Mail
‘The poet of the spy story.’ Sunday Times
‘Deighton is so far in the front of other writers in the field that they are not even in sight’ Sunday Times
‘Nobody now seriously doubts that Deighton is the most credible of all the spysmiths’ The Scotsman
‘I want to raise a cheer to Mr Len Deighton whose unnamed hero in his second brilliant thriller is all too like the rest of us except that he works for MI5’ Financial Times
‘Mr Deighton is really something special’
Sunday Times
Product Description
The dead hand of a long-defeated Nazi Third Reich reaches out to Portugal, London and Marrakech in Deighton’s second novel, featuring the same anonymous narrator and milieu of The IPCRESS File, but finds Dawlish now head of the secret British Intelligence unit, WOOC(P).
The Ipcress File was a debut sensation. Here in the second Secret File, Horse under Water, skin-diving, drug trafficking and blackmail all feature in a curious story in which the dead hand of a long-defeated Hitler-Germany reaches out to Portugal, London and Marrakech, and to all the neo-Nazis of today's Europe.
The detail is frightening but unfaultable; the story as up to date as ever it was. The un-named hero of The Ipcress File the same: insolent, fallible, capricious - in other words, human. But he must draw on all his abilities, good and bad, when plunged into a story of murder, betrayal and greed every bit as murky as the waters off the coast of Portugal, where the answers lie buried.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
17 of 17 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
Synopsis: an un-named agent is sent to Portugal to deal with large amounts of false banknotes coming ashore; this fake money could be used to fund groups opposing the Salazar dictatorship. But many people are interested in the source of the false notes, and this source turns out to hold more than just money...
This is the second instalment of four books about the unnamed WOOC(P) agent: Ipcress File came first, and Funeral in Berlin and Billion Dollar Brain are 3rd and 4th.
I don't give five stars easily - but this is beautifully structured, clever, knowledgeable, with sardonic humour, comments on class, street-wise.... it is cool. Is it dated, seeing it was published in 1963? Oh yes, in that there are no mobile phones, Portugal is still a dictatorship, and there are three-penny pieces. No, in that the language is taut and pretty timeless, conversations feel just right and the jokes still work, as do the observations - "window display men were junking polystyrene X-mas trees, and ordering gambolling lambs."
The un-named agent (called harry Palmer in the movies) has been compared to James Bond. Utter nonsense - he is lower class, a lot smarter, and the writing is incomparibly better than that of Fleming. The writing is clever, very clever, and much is left unsaid, just inferred. The book is also very good on power structures and power games, hidden politics, illegal gold dies, wartime meteorology and secretaries - and much else. If anybody is writing thrillers in 2009 as good as Deighton did in '63, tell me; because I have not found them, yet.
This is the second instalment of four books about the unnamed WOOC(P) agent: Ipcress File came first, and Funeral in Berlin and Billion Dollar Brain are 3rd and 4th.
I don't give five stars easily - but this is beautifully structured, clever, knowledgeable, with sardonic humour, comments on class, street-wise.... it is cool. Is it dated, seeing it was published in 1963? Oh yes, in that there are no mobile phones, Portugal is still a dictatorship, and there are three-penny pieces. No, in that the language is taut and pretty timeless, conversations feel just right and the jokes still work, as do the observations - "window display men were junking polystyrene X-mas trees, and ordering gambolling lambs."
The un-named agent (called harry Palmer in the movies) has been compared to James Bond. Utter nonsense - he is lower class, a lot smarter, and the writing is incomparibly better than that of Fleming. The writing is clever, very clever, and much is left unsaid, just inferred. The book is also very good on power structures and power games, hidden politics, illegal gold dies, wartime meteorology and secretaries - and much else. If anybody is writing thrillers in 2009 as good as Deighton did in '63, tell me; because I have not found them, yet.
9 of 9 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
John Le Carré (JLC)'s and Len Deighton (LD)'s early 1960's spy novels have not aged much in human terms. They deal with (counter-) espionage against the backdrop of the Cold War. The heroes of both authors sometimes go back to WW II. After the Allied Nations-Soviet victory over Hitler Germany, there is lingering mutual respect for former Soviet contacts, more so in LD's books than in JLC's.
The most charming evidence of the possible aging of spy novels of the early 1960s are the cars. In "Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy", JLC's hero Jim Prideaux drives an Alvin ("Best Car England ever Made"),in this book the nameless hero shakes off a tailing Ford Anglia, but finds another tail, a Bristol 407 parked opposite his flat when he arrives home. The hero's boss himself drives a Riley, described by LD as "Britain's answer to US space exploration". Thanks to Google these monuments to British engineering can be viewed and admired, and without doubt many are still roadworthy thanks to clubs of fans and owners.
The book's nameless hero smokes Gauloise cigarettes and is serious about good coffee. He spent part of WW II in Portugal. He and his boss Dawlish work in a secret branch of the War Office called W.O.O.C (P), located in a shabby building on Charlotte Street in London. They will reappear in later books. In this novel, the hero is sent on a diving course in preparation for a venture that might yield a lot of counterfeit money from a sunken German WW II submarine, which could be invested, budget-neutral, in a group intent on overthrowing the then-ruling Salazar dictatorship in Portugal. Its principal locations are London and Albufeira in Portugal's Algarve.
Apart from diving 40 meters deep, the hero is constantly trying to find out what is really at stake. And why he was selected to find out? Claustrophobics should skip the probes into the dark interior of the massive U-Boot. Before and during the dives, the hero is tailed, his messages are intercepted, and several of the associates forced on him die. His mission objectives remain vague. What is going on? Who is behind it all? No one seems to be who he claims to be. Some protagonists go back to WW II, even the Spanish civil war. And the horse under water is not an animal at all. Many questions are raised and most of the answers are given in 58 brief chapters and six Appendixes.
Compulsive reading, lots of history and WW II anecdotes, and some flippancy about UK's higher circles. Nice read.
The most charming evidence of the possible aging of spy novels of the early 1960s are the cars. In "Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy", JLC's hero Jim Prideaux drives an Alvin ("Best Car England ever Made"),in this book the nameless hero shakes off a tailing Ford Anglia, but finds another tail, a Bristol 407 parked opposite his flat when he arrives home. The hero's boss himself drives a Riley, described by LD as "Britain's answer to US space exploration". Thanks to Google these monuments to British engineering can be viewed and admired, and without doubt many are still roadworthy thanks to clubs of fans and owners.
The book's nameless hero smokes Gauloise cigarettes and is serious about good coffee. He spent part of WW II in Portugal. He and his boss Dawlish work in a secret branch of the War Office called W.O.O.C (P), located in a shabby building on Charlotte Street in London. They will reappear in later books. In this novel, the hero is sent on a diving course in preparation for a venture that might yield a lot of counterfeit money from a sunken German WW II submarine, which could be invested, budget-neutral, in a group intent on overthrowing the then-ruling Salazar dictatorship in Portugal. Its principal locations are London and Albufeira in Portugal's Algarve.
Apart from diving 40 meters deep, the hero is constantly trying to find out what is really at stake. And why he was selected to find out? Claustrophobics should skip the probes into the dark interior of the massive U-Boot. Before and during the dives, the hero is tailed, his messages are intercepted, and several of the associates forced on him die. His mission objectives remain vague. What is going on? Who is behind it all? No one seems to be who he claims to be. Some protagonists go back to WW II, even the Spanish civil war. And the horse under water is not an animal at all. Many questions are raised and most of the answers are given in 58 brief chapters and six Appendixes.
Compulsive reading, lots of history and WW II anecdotes, and some flippancy about UK's higher circles. Nice read.
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
Format:Kindle Edition|Amazon Verified Purchase
The early Len Deighton spy books are unbelievably good - at least as good as, but now less read than, early Fleming and Le Carre. Like his others, Horse Under Water has a cynical hero (played by Michael Caine in films Funeral in Berlin and the Ipcress File), much double dealing and betrayal, descriptive writing (the account of a 1960s Royal Navy dive school course alone is worth the price), snappy one liners and dialogue ("Blood, vomit and alcohol, it should be on the [Gribraltar] coat of arms" "It's on just about everything else") and enough action and glamour to keep you interested (Bond rather than Smiley levels).
Horse Under Water revolves round a WW2 German submarine sunk off Portugal, treachery in the British establishment, infighting between British spy agencies, the international drugs trade - so there is no shortage of stuff going on. The atmospherics are beautifully detailed (Whitehall, Gibraltar, fascist Portugal) with Deighton's love of food and drink (he also had a Guardian cooking column) thrown in, with plenty of characters thrown in (from spy masters to Royal Navy petty officers).
You may particularly enjoy the book if you like Deighton or Le Carre, or the Michael Caine films. But frankly, if you just feel like a witty, fast moving and well written thriller, you can't do much better than this.
Horse Under Water revolves round a WW2 German submarine sunk off Portugal, treachery in the British establishment, infighting between British spy agencies, the international drugs trade - so there is no shortage of stuff going on. The atmospherics are beautifully detailed (Whitehall, Gibraltar, fascist Portugal) with Deighton's love of food and drink (he also had a Guardian cooking column) thrown in, with plenty of characters thrown in (from spy masters to Royal Navy petty officers).
You may particularly enjoy the book if you like Deighton or Le Carre, or the Michael Caine films. But frankly, if you just feel like a witty, fast moving and well written thriller, you can't do much better than this.
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Most Recent Customer Reviews
Excellent tale, rubbish ebook
A classy tale from Deighton let down by an (as usual) appallingly put together ebook, which adds to the usual glut of formatting and copyreading errors the appaling sin of... Read more
Published 3 months ago by M. G. James
A good read, not as good as the Ipcress File
I finally got around to reading this as it's the only "Harry Palmer" story not to have been made into a film. Read more
Published 4 months ago by A. Stanhope
Classic Deighton.
Len Deighton's put upon, nameless spy returns for a second adventure. Very little has changed in our hero's life since the escapades of The Ipcress File. Read more
Published 11 months ago by FlyingAspidistra
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