Horse Under Water cover art

Horse Under Water

Penguin Modern Classics

 Preview
Try Premium Plus free
Pick 1 audiobook a month from our unmatched collection - including bestsellers and new releases.
Unlimited access to our all-you-can-listen catalogue of 15K+ audiobooks and podcasts
Access exclusive sales and deals.
£8.99/month after 30 days. Renews automatically.

Horse Under Water

By: Len Deighton
Narrated by: James Lailey
Try Premium Plus free

£8.99/month after 30 days. Renews automatically. See here for eligibility.

Buy Now for £12.99

Buy Now for £12.99

About this listen

Brought to you by Penguin.

A sunken U-Boat has lain undisturbed on the Atlantic ocean floor since the Second World War - until now. Inside its rusting hull, among the corpses of top-rank Nazis, lie secrets people will kill to obtain. The sequel to Len Deighton's game-changing debut The IPCRESS File, Horse Under Water sees its nameless, laconic narrator sent from fogbound London to the Algarve, where he must dive through layers of deceit in a place rotten with betrayals.

'The poet of the spy story' Sunday Times

© Len Deighton 1963 (P) Penguin Audio 2021

 Action & Adventure Espionage Historical Mystery, Thriller & Suspense Spies & Politics Suspense Thriller & Suspense U-Boat Submarine

Listeners also enjoyed...

 Under Suspicion cover art
The Insider cover art
My Name Is Nobody cover art
Agent in Berlin cover art
Chasing the Wind cover art
Prince of Spies cover art
The Brief cover art
Hellyer's Trip cover art
Harry Lampeter and the War with Scotland cover art
Bad Debts cover art
The Assistant cover art
Moskva cover art
Stormbreaker cover art
A Dying Breed cover art
Night Soldiers cover art
To Cut a Short Story Short, Vol. II cover art

Critic reviews

Lively, exciting, ingenious.
Len Deighton's spy novels are so good they make me sad the Cold War is over. (Malcolm Gladwell)
What raises Deighton's genre to art is not only his absorbing characters but his metaphoric grace, droll wit, command of technical detail, and sure sense of place. (Andy Solomon)
Deighton's fiction has stood the test of time. His habitually acerbic narrative voice still has much to say to contemporary readers ... Now a fresh generation have the chance to sample Deighton's wares as Penguin republishes many of his books. (Vanessa Thorpe)
Mr Deighton is really something special.
For sheer readability he has no peer.
Fleming made spy fiction globally popular, but it took Deighton in the Sixties to make it hip.

With this, his second bestseller in as many years, Len Deighton really hit his stride. Multiple deceits defy a full plot summary. Suffice to say that with a succession of startling revelations linked by sharp dialogue, the book effortlessly acquires classic status.

(Barry Turner)
All stars
Most relevant
The recording is so muffled I was missing every other word so had to return it. Was really enjoying what I had managed to hear.

poor recording

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
This is so well written with descriptive phrases that stick in the memory for life.

Rivering

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
Fascinating stuff. With lots of twists and turns. Great characters good middling and bad. Always enjoy LD.

Dive deep!

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
A story of twists and turns well written with humour and wonderful descriptions The narrator was outstanding, probably the best I have heard on audible. His ability with accents was so good. An absorbing listen for a long Journey UK to Spain. Highly recommended.

Great Story brilliant narration

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
Len Deighton I have always found a struggle to get through when it comes to his books, but the audible version of his books are simply fascinating and James Lailey simply keeps you hooked for the whole time.

Having watched the three Michael Caine movies of the "unnamed British agent" (affectionately known as Harry Palmer) I started to make my way through the books, and after listening to Funeral in Berlin and Billion Dollar Brain, I turned my attention to Horse Under Water.

This one I was going totally blind into, so had no idea about the plot in any way.

The story starts off very strong, with our hero in Morocco setting up a deal that could see a government coup happening in Portugal, with him going back to London saying that financing will be required.

The UK Government can not be seen to directly finance a counter government group, so a plan is made to salvage money that is thought to be inside a sunken German U-Boat off the Portugal coast.

After a few weeks of training to dive our hero goes to Portugal, and after weeks of searching nothing has been found, but a entry in the ships log written in ball point pen makes our hero suspicious that all is not what it appears.

After this the plot shifts from a spy-thriller to more of a murder mystery story as a murder takes place during one dive and our hero is almost blown up when he gets into his car.

All in all a good story, but just not as gripping as Funeral in Berlin and very lacking compared to Billion Dollar Brain.

Good story, but very lacking

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
See more reviews