Either a 1960s period piece or a contemporary film version of Horse Under Water would still be a very welcome prospect for fans of Harry Palmer – and would surely represent a much more fitting comeback for the Palmer film series than the ‘straight-to-video’ Bullet to Beijing (1996) and Midnight in St. We specialise in rare and hard to come by works on all subjects over the last 500 years, together with modern first editions and decorative sets and bindings. Similarly, Deighton’s snappy take on the trials and tribulations of everyday life, such as gas meters and payphones.

I noticed that the puffs on the cover of Funeral In Berlin include one from the San Francisco Chronicle saying Deighton is ‘the Raymond Chandler of the cloak and dagger set. A very good book without inscriptions in a very good unclipped wrapper with some lifting to the laminate and some wear to the edges and tips and corners. Meanwhile, the man now known as da Cunha had secured the only copy and was using it liberally to blackmail eminent Brits, a small part to fund HK’s heroin factory, but mostly to support a network of Fascist parties across Europe. Other titles in the Harry Palmer series include Horse Under Water, Funeral in Berlin, Billion Dollar Brain, An Expensive Place to Die, Spy Story, and Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star.Some readers might find the technology I’ve found interesting, especially as it touches upon modern weaponry and espionage technology. Albufeira The first half of the book is dominated by diving: the Narrator’s (comic) diving instruction by the Navy at Portsmouth; then the flight to Gibraltar, picking up Joe MacIntosh, Our Man in Spain, and an Italian named Girgio, the Best Diver In Europe; then the drive to the fishing village of Albufeira and setting up base in an apartment there. Da Cunha is an ex-Nazi, but not directly involved: HK pays him protection money, and da Cunha borrows HK’s big pleasure boat whenever he wants to. The text also explains that the submerged buoy, or Horse, could be ‘summoned’ to the surface by the use of a special, Very Long-Wave radio system. It tore a white hole in the green ocean and in falling brought its fellow down, and that the next, until the white stuffing of the sea burst out of the lengthening gash.

Against his better judgement the Narrator is seduced by her, whereupon she tips him off about HK’s heroin factory. He closed his eyes, gulped down his claret and leaned against the wall like a worn-out roll of line. Head and tail of the spine minutely pushed and a neat name to the rear of the front free end-paper otherwise a near fine copy in a VG dustwrapper which is slightly tanned/browned. A 1968 film adaptation of Horse Under Water was planned, but following the poor reception of Billion Dollar Brain it was abandoned. A character from Funeral In Berlin, Harvey Newbegin, inducts him into the organisation and shows him the Brain, the vast computer which is running everything, before absconding with loot and information, and then meeting a sticky end in Leningrad.Saltzman did look around for another actor – ‘We don’t want anyone who looks like Mike and he probably won’t even wear spectacles or even be a cockney,’ he said – but nothing ever came of the idea. I don’t know whether Chandler invented the smart-alec simile, but it seems to be part of the humorous self-consciousness of the thriller genre. I hope some new actor can give his interpretation of Harry,’ said Caine, ‘but after three films I don’t think the Palmer character holds anything for me anymore. The critical reaction to the film [ Billion Dollar Brain (1967)] was the most negative any of the trilogy had had, and while Saltzman had plans to film Deighton’s next Palmer novel, Horse Under Water, Caine was adamant (rightly enough as it turned out) that he had done everything he could with the character. For example, a colleague who’s been helping out on the Portugal job gets into our man’s car at the London Airport car park to drive it over to him and the car explodes, killing this colleague, as our man watches.