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Horse Under Water
*** Shopping-Tip: Horse Under Water
'''''Horse Under Water''''' (
1963, ISBN 0399104194) is the second of
Len Deighton's
spy novels featuring an unnamed British agent protagonist (named
Harry Palmer in the
Film movie adaptions).
The novel is set in
1960, mostly in a small fishing village in
Portugal, which was then a dictatorship. The style of ''
The Ipcress File'' — multiple plots twists, Gauloises cigarettes, grimy, soot-stained British winter — is retained. Although less well known — unlike ''Ipcress'', ''
Funeral in Berlin'' or ''
Billion Dollar Brain'', it never was adapted cinematically; ''Horse Under Water'' does compares well to its predecessor novels.
In common with several of his other early novels, the chapter headings have a "feature". In ''Horse Under Water'' these are
crossword puzzle clue chapter titles; vaguely appropriate, since the protaonist agent solves crossword puzzles.
{{spoiler}}
The plot centres on retrieving items from a
Type XXI U-boat sunk of the Portuguese coast in the last days of
World War II. Initially, the items are forged British and American currency, for financing a revolution in Portugal on the cheap. Later, it switches to
heroin (the "Horse" of the title), and eventually it is revealed that the true interest is in the "Weiss list" — a list of Britons prepared to help the
Third Reich set up a puppet government in Britain, should Germany prevail. Thrown into the mix is secret "ice melting" technology which could be vital to the missile
submarines then beginning to hide under the Arctic sea ice.
Category:1963 books
Category: Fictional secret agents and spies
