Book review: Horse Under Water

Horse Under Water (1963) is the second of several Len Deighton spy novels featuring an unnamed British intelligence officer. It was preceded by The IPCRESS File and followed by Funeral in Berlin, says wiki.

For some reason most likely related to the order in which I read things when young, it isn't on my "classic" list up with IPCRESS, Spy Story and Funeral in Berlin. But actually it is just as good. It has much the same mix of plot twists, real-seeming spywork, interesting locations, snappy dialogue, and somewhat irritating "the sky was like a lemon in a martini" sort of descriptions, though sometimes it works - "Cats sat around with their hands in their pockets and stared insolently back into the headlight beams".

The interesting location here is a fishing village in Portugal during the Salazar dictatorship; probably even more exotic in those days before common travel and limited information.

As to the plot, I think it works. The buoy is implausibly clever, though; they just didn't have that tech in those days, let alone the ability for it to continue to work for a decade; indeed radio underwater essentially doesn't work.

And the constant revision of what the thing was in the boat that was of interest works well.

The canister that they recovered though: that was empty, as-in not-full-of-water: would it really have stayed that way for a decade? Indeed buoyancy would have jammed it against the ceiling, making it easy to find, but perhaps quite hard to move; indeed, would it have collapsed under pressure? I think that's ignored.