Books: Slow Horses By Mick Herron (2010)

“Slough House is where MI5 agents are sent when they've royally screwed up, with the hope that those agents will take the hint and resign from the service. Slow Horses, as they are called, are led by the reject of all MI5 rejects, Jackson Lamb, a slobbish, lazy has-been with dark secrets in his past. When Lamb is asked to run an errand for Regent's Park, he sends River Cartwright on his first out-of-the-office job since he landed in Slough House eight months earlier. How can rummaging through the trash bags of a washed up journalist link with the video of the hooded man waiting to be beheaded?”

 

So, I’m a bit of a slow horse to this series (sweet, Jebus, another series), which currently contains eight novels, a number of novella’s, and an Apple+ TV adaptation now in its fourth series (and already picked up for a fifth). Its recent multiple Emmy nominations sparked an interest in me, so I decided to find used versions (which was hard, but not altogether that difficult) of the first three.

 

I found this thriller about spies for MI5 who screw up, but instead of being fired, are sent to Slough House to do meaningless, paper pushing work to be darkly fun. I did struggle with at the start. Its age-old problem with series books because, like many TV pilots, the ensemble cast of characters, led by one Jackson Lamb (played by Gary Oldman on the show version), must be introduced. Each of them has their own issues and their own secrets (which made it confusing at first, as it became hard differentiate each character). Again, this is the first book in a series, so I do expect some slowness, as I worked my way through those character introductions in the first few chapters.

 

Slow Horses really is a new style of spy thriller, it being sharply witty and well plotted than others of this genre. It is not for fans of Le Carre’s hero of George Smiley (who Oldman has played before), but the dollops of dry British humor does make it fun. Also, this is no James Bond (though he and Moneypenny get name dropped) or Jason Bourne action series, with, girls, glitz, glamour, and gadgets. It’s firmly set in modern times with people more like Q than anything else.

 

The plot, although not breakneck like you'd expect from other novels in the genre, is well paced towards the middle part of the book and then the book really starts to fly.

 

Slow Horses does dance between serious drama, dark humor, and satire of the genre. So it’s not an outright comedy, but I could call it a variation of Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy for people who like morbid, twisty humor and spy thrillers. It also carries a bit of DNA from those old Cold War spy novels from decades ago, along a few modern British writers who are doing variations on a theme, including the supernatural tales of both Ben Aaronovitch and Charles Stross.

 

Finally, since I’m not up to date on British politics, I assume author Mick Herron based some of his characters on a few real-life politicians.