Book 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. '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 Born in London, Len Deighton served in
the RAF before graduating from the Royal College of Art (which recently
elected him a Senior Fellow). While in New York City working as a
magazine illustrator he began writing his first novel, The Ipcress File,
which was published in 1962. He is now the author of more than thirty
books of fiction and non-fiction. At present living in Europe, he has,
over the years, lived with his family in ten different countries from
Austria to Portugal.
