Horse Under Water Horse Under Water Horse Under Water (1963, , ) is the second of four Len Deighton spy novels featuring an unnamed British agent protagonist (named Harry Palmer in the film adaptions). It was preceded by "The IPCRESS File" and followed by "Funeral in Berlin". The novel is set in 1960, mostly in a small fishing village in Portugal, which was then a dictatorship led by António de Oliveira Salazar. It retains the style of "The IPCRESS File" — multiple plots twists, Gauloises cigarettes, grimy, and soot-stained British winter. In common with several of Deighton's other early novels, the chapter headings
Spy Story (novel) and no menace." Bell said that "evasive indirection has been Deighton's trademark since his first spy novel, The Ipcress File, appeared in 1963. At the time, his obsessive reliance on the blurred and intangible, on loaded pauses and mysteriously disjointed dialogue, did convey the shadowy meanness of the spy's world, with its elusive loyalties, camouflaged identities and weary brutality. But Deighton's later efforts have bloated these cryptic and inscrutable mannerisms into a dense fog of unknowing." A film adaptation starring Michael Petrovitch as Pat Armstrong was released in 1976, directed by Lindsay Shonteff. Spy Story (novel) Spy Story is a