Slough House by Mick Herron

Published by Soho Crime on February 9, 2021

Members of a group called the Yellow Vests are making noise about British pride, referring of course to white pride. While Slough House avoids direct mention of Brexit, Mick Herron alludes to it throughout the novel, painting its proponents as chumps and the politicians who endorse it as power hungry chump manipulators.

Peter Judd is one of the manipulators. He’s using Desmond Flint as his stalking horse. Until Judd takes ownership of him, Flint is part of an unruly mob who are trying to “own the libs.” Judd is manipulating Flint into a position of power, a position that Judd plans to control.

Judd believes he also controls Diana Taverner, who occupies the First Desk at the Secret Intelligence Service. Judd and a few other men of wealth bankrolled an off-the-books operation that Taverner directed without the knowledge of her superiors or the Prime Minister. Seeking revenge for a GRU murder of British agents, Taverner commissioned an assassination of her own on Russian soil. The private funding made it possible to do so without seeking permission that never would have been granted.

The GRU, of course, doesn’t appreciate Taverner’s retaliation, so it sends two assassins to England to perform a counterretaliation. To make that mission work, it needs to identify some agents. The GRU has acquired an archived list of agents from a wealthy young media owner named Damien Cantor, who believes that owning a news channel is “like putting a deposit down on a government.” The list is so old that some of the agents are no longer working. All of the agents happen to be assigned to Slough House, where the SIS sends spies who turn out to be useless when it doesn’t kill them instead.

The plot thus parallels current themes in British politics, from rising nationalism and Brexit to media influence and image as a substitute for substance. The plot begins with the murder of former Slough House agents. The killings coincide with a training exercise that irritates Jackson Lamb almost as much as the murders. Lamb is the curator of Slough House and perhaps the most unlikely spy master in the history of spy fiction. Lamb despises his agents (or at least that’s his claim) but he is solidly behind them, following the code of protecting his joes at all cost. When it becomes clear that his joes are being targeted, Jackson doesn’t let Taverner get in the way of doing what he believes should be done. The slow horses at Slough House might not be the best that Britain has to offer, but under Jackson’ guidance, they’re always good enough.

No other series in spy fiction infuses the intrigue of espionage with humor as effectively as the Slough House books. The supporting cast is quirky — Roderick Ho unrealistically regards himself as James Bond; Shirley Dander regularly gets drunk and sleeps around, River Cartwright never quite lives up to the standard set by his legendary grandfather — but they are endearing in their own ways. Rarely does a book go by in which a slow horse doesn’t die and it’s always a bit sad when that happens.

Much of the humor comes from Herron’s keen observation of the world: “When they went on about sixty being the new forty, they forgot to add that that made thirty-something the new twelve.” Herron alternates between dry wit and fart jokes, always achieving a perfect balance of humor and drama. His stories make clear that the world’s evil is not confined to places like Russia and China but is equally embodied in the lust for power that threatens all democracies. Every book in this series is a winner; Slough House is no exception.

RECOMMENDED

Spook Street by Mick Herron

Published by Soho Press on February 21, 2017

Mick Herron’s Slough House books are among the most entertaining spy novels of the current century. Slough House is home to members of the British Secret Service who are considered unworthy of employment but who, for whatever reason, cannot be fired. Under the deceptively watchful eye of Jackson Lamb, the “slow horses” at Slough House manage to prevail, more or less, in their fight against England’s enemies, or its friends, depending on the circumstances. Spook Street is the fourth novel in the series.

Spook Street opens with stage setting, reintroducing familiar characters and their problems, which variously include a gambling addiction, alcoholism, anger management issues, and troubled relationships. A new character, J.K. Coe, is clearly somewhere on the autism spectrum and probably high on the psychopathy scale. A terrorist bombing occurs in the background but doesn’t seem immediately connected to the plot.

The plot’s immediate concern is River Cartwright, whose grandfather, a legendary spy who raised River, is becoming lost to dementia. River’s grandfather is increasingly paranoid and apparently living in the past, certain he’s being followed by an enemy. Lost in his fantasy, when River comes to his home and draws him a bath, the old man seems determined to kill his grandson.

That plot eventually sends a capable killer to Slough House while Lamb is off buying whiskey, leaving nobody tending the shop who has the skills to fight an armed assassin. Before that happens, a slow horse does some actual spying, traveling undercover to France and learning about a black ops training site that was apparently responsible for the attempt on the life of River’s grandfather and for the assassin who invades Slough House. The purpose for the site remains a mystery until the novel’s end, one of a few mysteries that occupy the reader as the story gathers steam.

Like the other novels in the series, Spook Street integrates humor, action, and unexpected moments of drama. The first third is a mix of wit, farce, and slapstick before a more serious story begins to unfold.

It seems unwise to pick a favorite character in this series because the character might not survive until the end of the story. But live or die, the characters all have the kind of quirky personalities and idiosyncrasies that invite empathy. They are not necessarily a likeable bunch — they tend to have love-hate relationships with each other — but they are fundamentally decent and, on occasion, surprisingly competent. Particularly Lamb, whose competence is never in question, but whose Machiavellian nature asserts itself in the interest of a good cause at the novel’s end. Above all, having been a joe for much of his life, Lamb takes care of his joes. “And one thing joes learn quickly is that those who write the rules rarely suffer their weight.”

Mick Herron stitches this all together with fine prose, deadpan humor, and sympathetic insight into the emotions of third string players. Spook Street maintains the high level of a series that offers a unique and welcome take on the British spy novel.

RECOMMENDED

Real Tigers by Mick Herron

Published by Soho Crime on January 19, 2016

Machiavellian office politics blend with the humorous side of espionage in the third Slough House novel. The slow horses are British spies who have been relegated to Slough House because they abused alcohol or drugs or had a gambling problem or just screwed up an assignment and are no longer trusted to run with the fast horses. They are minor league players in the intelligence community, relegated to meaningless tasks with the hope and expectation that they will become frustrated and quit. In Real Tigers, as in the first two novels in this series, the slow horses turn out to be surprisingly resourceful -- when they aren’t screwing up.

Catherine Standish, an efficient PA who has never been a field operative, is snatched off the street. Her fate seems to rest in the hands of slow horse River Cartwright, when the snatchers ask him to acquire and exchange a confidential file for Standish. But an equally pressing question is the fate of Slough House, and whether it can survive the machinations of Peter Judd, the devious new Home Secretary who has his sights set on the Prime Minister’s office. Two other political players complete a triangle of backstabbing as they follow devious plans to maneuver themselves into better positions.

Jackson Lamb, the spy in charge of Slough House, is rude, crude, and lewd. He is so repulsive as to be loveable -- or at least laugh-out-loud funny. His only redeeming feature is a rather selfish dedication to his subordinates -- selfish in the sense that he takes it personally if the enemy (or the British government, the two being difficult to distinguish at times) try to harm or kidnap them.

A droll sense of humor that manages to be at once understated and outrageous is one of the things I love about British writers. Mick Herron’s combination of dry wit and slapstick is perfect, while his ability to mix humor with action accomplishes the difficult task of making a thriller both exciting and funny. Real Tigers is just as good as the first two entries in this series.

RECOMMENDED

Dead Lions by Mick Herron

Published by Soho Crime on May 7, 2013 

Dead Lions has everything a good spy novel needs -- intrigue, strong characters, crafty tradecraft, byzantine plotting, sharp prose -- with the addition of a healthy dose of humor. The heroes (if you could call them that) are slow horses: Intelligence Service officers who aren't trusted with serious work, assigned to Slough House in the hope that they will retire or die of boredom.

Dickie Bow, a former spook with a drinking problem who went off the books after the Cold War ended, spots a Moscow hood in London and, acting on instinct, follows him. While riding a bus a couple of seats behind the hood, Bow dies, apparently of a heart attack. Jackson Lamb, in charge of Slough House, investigates Bow's death, while his employees are diligently avoiding productive work -- not that they're ever given productive work to do. The slow horses are an engaging group of misfits, and as the novel unfolds, we get to know them all. We even start to like them ... most of them, anyway.

The Cold War is over, but as Lamb investigates Bow's death, he begins to wonder whether there are Russian spies who didn't get the memo. Particularly the greatest spy of all, a legend who never existed -- unless he did. Lamb's minions at Slough House aren't particularly suited for field work, but Lamb decides to mount an operation that will get to the bottom of Bow's (presumed) murder and a (presumably) long-dormant scheme involving sleeper agents. Meanwhile, without Lamb's knowledge, two slow horses are borrowed from Slough House and tasked with creating a security plan for an upcoming meeting with a Russian industrialist. As you would expect, these plot threads eventually join into a single strand.

I've read any number of spy novels that are more somber than this one without being half as clever. The plot is both wild and wickedly smart. It's also more believable than the plots in many novels that are meant to be taken more seriously. Mick Herron writes in a tone of perfectly understated sarcasm that never fails to amuse. At the same time, he manages to tell a conventional spy story that is sometimes heart-warming and always intriguing. Toward the end, he delivers the excitement of a thriller. All of that, coupled with the cast of quirky characters, make me want to read the novel that introduced the slow horses.

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