Horse Under Water (Penguin Modern Classics)

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What is unique about the book is that although fiction, Deighton drew much from his knowledge of military history --and to let you share in that pleasure--he provides a running patter of footnotes and an appendix at the end. Readers of Rebecca West will see where he got some of his ideas from.

It was and remains a book by males for males. Female characters are few and far between and always presented in a paternalistic and sometimes prurient way. It's actually a good study, along with others of its time and genre, of what one might call 'systemic misogyny.' Women aren't absent, just subservient to the men and their exciting story. On rereading many decades later, I found the book still engaging and engrossing. Since there is a twist ending, and I already know it, the story is no longer as compelling as it once was, but still a fun read. Deighton did make a valiant attempt to end on a high note. Clearly writing visually with a movie deal in mind, he vividly described the tense confrontation in the heroin lab and subsequent shootout/bloodbath aboard the boat. And as in The Ipcress File, he brought the book to a satisfactory conclusion with the post-mission office chat. The Appendices were a nice touch and added heft to the story's authenticity. The plot involves a sunken Nazi sub lying off the south coast of Portugal and various things that may or may not be interred inside. British intelligence sends the supremely cool and jaded Harry Palmer on a Royal Navy diving course just so he can participate in the effort to retrieve them. Rivals are on the scene, including a sinister Portuguese aristocrat and an expat American jazz critic with mysterious sources of wealth. Allies include a former Italian navy diver and the obligatory enticing female ("She was cleaning fish in the kitchen. She wore a microscopic white bikini.")I probably would have given at least a 4 when this first came out, but in the context of the 21st century writing i have to drop it to 3.

There is more sardonic humour and a few leaps of faith, that in the real world would probably be amiss but it makes for the pacing and readability of these books.

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I watched the waves moving down on to the shore. Each shadow darkened until one, losing its balance, toppled forward. Deighton was born in Marylebone, London, in 1929. His father was a chauffeur and mechanic, and his mother was a part-time cook. After leaving school, Deighton worked as a railway clerk before performing his National Service, which he spent as a photographer for the Royal Air Force's Special Investigation Branch. After discharge from the RAF, he studied at St Martin's School of Art in London in 1949, and in 1952 won a scholarship to the Royal College of Art, graduating in 1955. Now I am much older, and perhaps a little jaded. I can enjoy the book, but now notice how very "busy" it is. Seemingly all the good guys have encyclopaedic knowledge of pretty much any topic. What I once saw as an acceptable form of insolence in the agent now seems false. He likes to look after number one, reasonable enough, but he doesn't always see the big picture. He's not as smart as he thinks he is! I enjoyed The Ipcress File and have since set out reading all the Harry Palmer novels. This second one was a good read as well, though not as strong as the first, suffering from protracted exposition that didn't forward the story; for example, the opening chapters detail Palmer's diving course that did little except explain how he later possessed diving skills (even though he did very little of the actual diving; Singleton and Giorgio doing the heavy lifting in that department). When Len Deighton's first books arrived in the early 1960s they were lauded for their realistic portrait of the world of espionage, and were a refreshing change from the glamourous and unrealistic fantasy world of James Bond. Both The Ipcress File and Horse Under Water certainly feel very credible and real. Interestingly, Horse Under Water contains a bit more adventure and action, and less of the day to day bureaucracy which featured in The Ipcress File. This time our sardonic working-class hero arrives at the shores of Salazar's Portugal, where he encounters a mixture of hard drugs, money and neo-Nazis.

As a result we end up with a book which has a few different threads being investigated. Len Deighton was a student of Art and an illustrator and he brings these techniques to his writing too. He very cleverly creates this foreground - our protagonist hearing noises, the taste of coffee, the way a ciggerette is rolled, side conversations - and in between all that, there are plot elements erractically mentioned. This can on one hand display the fact that our spy, our protagonist is an "always active" brain which takes in everything around him, but on the other hand, can reduce the reader's patience to actually put up with the book as unlike Le Carre, the plot really is paper thin and barely moving. 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. Reading a Len Deighton is somewhere between reading an Ian Flemind and a Le Carre. The plots are as outlandish as Fleming's and the attempt to make it sound somber like Le Carre.

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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 one character Deighton infused fully with life was Harry Kondit. I envisioned Kondit being played (with aplomb) by Tony Curtis had this novel ever been adapted for the screen. This Brooklynite abroad had a way with the broads (Charly falls under his spell briefly until she's later trying to perforate him in a self-righteous hell hath no fury moment in the drug lab). Not to be outdone by a colonial, Palmer also enjoys a night of prurient passion with Charly. Who says Deighton's books break the Bond formula?