Books: Spook Street (Slough House #4) By Mick Herron (2017)

“A shakeup at MI5 and a terrorist attack on British soil set in motion clandestine machinery known to few modern spies. David Cartwright isn't a modern spy, however; he's legend and a bonafide Cold War hero. He's also in his dotage and losing his mind to Alzheimer's. His stories of -stotes- hiding in the bushes, following his every move have been dismissed by friends and family for years. Cartwright may be losing track of reality but he's certain about one thing: Old spooks don't go quietly and neither do the secrets they keep. So what happens when an old spook loses his mind? Does the Service have a retirement home for those who know too many secrets but don't remember they're secret? Or does someone take care of the senile spy for good? These are the questions River Cartwright must ask when his grandfather, starts to forget to wear pants and begins to suspect everyone in his life has been sent by the Home Office to watch him. River has the other thing worry about, because that bomb has killed forty innocent civilians. The agents of Slough House have to figure out who is behind this act of terror before the situation escalates.”

It’s been noted that Mick Herron often refrains from creating extensive character back stories, and for three books and a novella so far, this has remained true. We know that River Cartwright is the center of the Slough House universe, beyond Jackson Lamb, and a lot of the reasons he remains within Lambs grasp is because his grandfather, David, holds many secrets and also realizes that with his age and Alzheimer’s, is bound to cause problems down the line. In Spook Street, this comes to fruition (because mortality, addiction and ancestral sin are the many themes that play-out through the series). What is learned here points everything into a new direction.

For want of a better description, Spook Street moves fast, and plays out more like a spy thriller than ever. River goes off mostly on his own to solve why someone targeted his grandfather, which means using the passport of assassin that almost succeeded (who strangely looks similar to River). That leads to France and recently burned out building in Les Arbres and where River finds more questions than answers.

Meanwhile, Lamb tries to stall and find out how terror attack and the assassination attempt are connected to the Service. As always, despite him claiming so, Lamb knows things and his instincts are usually correct. This plugs into another theme of Herron’s, that Secret Service operates like any other workplace where "people are often doing quite dull jobs and working with other people who they don’t necessarily like, with a lot of office politics going on.”

Spook House remains true to the previous tales, with his farcical look at bureaucrats of the modern era, with a deeply cynical and often funny and darkly slanted take on politics, spies, peoples foibles, and world at large.

I cannot get enough.

Books: The List (Slough House 2.5) By Mick Herron (2015)

 

“Dieter Hess, an aged spy, is dead, and John Bachelor, his MI5 handler, is in deep, deep trouble. Death has revealed that deceased had been keeping a secret second bank account—and there is only ever one reason a spy has a secret second bank account. The question of whether he was a double agent must be resolved, and its answer may undo an entire career’s worth of spy secrets.”

The List is the first of a handful of short-stories/novellas that are connected to Mick Herron’s main Slough House series, and this one is set between books two and three (I guess book 2.5?). The story introduces a new character, J.K. Coe, who is in his first week with MI5, and who will become a recurring character in the series. The usual team is not too active here (a brief cameo of River Cartwright) but we get scenes –and some funny one-liners- from Jackson Lamb, Catherine Standish and Diane (Lady Di) Taverner.

What’s great here is The List gives the reader a better look at Jackson Lamb, who has spent three novels seemly a couple sets ahead of everyone and shows him why he’s such a badass, which is something he not often does –because he is usually busy with boozing, farting and torturing his Slow Horses. A nice filler, though. 

Still, at the end of the day, these novellas (like the ones Ben Aaronovitch has done with his Rivers of London series), this tale –and other three yet to come- are more for completest than necessary reads.

Books: The Long Walk By Richard Bachman/Stephen King (1979)

“Against the wishes of his mother, sixteen-year-old Ray Garraty is about to compete in the annual grueling match of stamina and wits known as The Long Walk. One hundred boys must keep a steady pace of four miles per hour without ever stopping... with the winner being awarded "The Prize"—anything he wants for the rest of his life. But, as part of this national tournament that sweeps through a dystopian America year after year, there are some harsh rules that Garraty and ninety-nine others must adhere to in order to beat out the rest. There is no finish line—the winner is the last man standing. Contestants cannot receive any outside aid whatsoever. Slow down under the speed limit and you're given a warning. Three warnings and you're out of the game—permanently.”

Stephen King has written and talked at length about the books that make up the initial Richard Bachman titles (Rage, The Long Walk, Roadwork, and The Running Man). While 1984’s Thinner was published as a Bachman title, he was outed by then. Meanwhile, two other Bachman titles, The Regulators {a “mirror” novel to his 1996 King tale Desperation} and Blaze came much later (that 2007 novel started as a novella written in 1973, and was then updated and expanded for the millennium). Finally, at the time of the announcement in 1985 about Bachman, King was already working on Misery, which he had planned to release as a Bachman book.

Hindsight is always 20/20, as it’s clear The Long Walk carried a lot of Stephen King DNA, even if published under Richard Bachman. But it was 1979 and the horror novelist was in his early days so unless you were really a reader who paid attention, what transpires in this book would’ve never been thought of connecting to him. While not highly original (somewhat a cousin to Shirley Jackson’s The Lottery), in many ways this Bachman/King novel is the modern progenitor of the “kids battle to the death game” genre that has taken over YA fiction for these last 20 years or so. Also, really, up until him, up until the 1970s, killing kids in novels was frowned upon. Here, King takes a bunch of youthful characters and puts them through an emotional and physical nightmare where the books simple premise comes into focus: Start walking, don’t stop. If you do, you get a warning. You only get three warnings before, well, as King puts it; you get your ticket punched.

It is a despairing, dark work, or as it’s been called, King’s “most pessimistic novel.” At times, it degenerates into people get killed in gruesome ways and I’m sort of no longer amused by this type of ultra-violence being sold as entertainment. Then there’s James Smythe of The Guardian, who felt the elements of the novel connected to the Vietnam conflict: “the televised draft, the horror of seeing new friends die, the seeming lack of reason for it occurring in the first place.” That theme sort of makes sense, because there is no real for all of this occurring, as Bachman/King does not explain a thing – the reader just assumes this is tale is set in an alternate universe.

With this novel – and another Bachman/King title, The Running Man, due out as films in 2025- I guess I would recommend them. Still, I’m unsure how a film version of this book will work. It’s overlong and much could be cut – but are they going to depict a 100 teen boys being killed?

But I’m not sure I’ll be standing in line at the theater to find out.

Books: Pompeii By Robert Harris (2003)

“All along the Mediterranean coast, the Roman empire’s richest citizens are relaxing in their luxurious villas, enjoying the last days of summer. The world’s largest navy lies peacefully at anchor in Misenum. The tourists are spending their money in the seaside resorts of Baiae, Herculaneum, and Pompeii. But the carefree lifestyle and gorgeous weather belie an impending cataclysm, and only one man is worried. The young engineer Marcus Attilius Primus has just taken charge of the Aqua Augusta, the enormous aqueduct that brings fresh water to a quarter of a million people in nine towns around the Bay of Naples. His predecessor has disappeared. Springs are failing for the first time in generations. And now there is a crisis on the Augusta’ s sixty-mile main line—somewhere to the north of Pompeii, on the slopes of Mount Vesuvius. Attilius—decent, practical, and incorruptible—promises Pliny, the famous scholar who commands the navy, that he can repair the aqueduct before the reservoir runs dry. His plan is to travel to Pompeii and put together an expedition, then head out to the place where he believes the fault lies. But Pompeii proves to be a corrupt and violent town, and Attilius soon discovers that there are powerful forces at work—both natural and man-made—threatening to destroy him.”

Like all historical novels that mix both fictional characters with historical fact, there is a bit of too much soap opera going on. Yes, it’s a disaster novel born out many 1970’s Hollywood films (Towering Inferno, Earthquake, and even Titanic, the 1997 version), but Harris also tries to make comparisons to the Roman Empire and America. This theme appears to come off deliberately, as the English author uses typical American terminology such as describing Pompeii as “boomtown.”

Another aspect to this genre is the creation of a sort modern character. Attilius is such, a man who seems to have little use for superstition and even religion in a time period rife with it. But who also seems to grasp science better than most and can solve almost every problem that folks have. He comes across as a natural leader, which causes friction among the many rich folks of Pompeii. This is the soap opera aspect, where the town leaders balk at his pertinent to know more than them. But even he, in the end, realizes the missed opportunities of what was coming: 

"Still, he tried to convey the power of what he had witnessed when the roof of the mountain lifted off. anand the blasting of the summit was merely the culmination of a host of other phenomena – the sulfer in the soil, the pools of noxious gas, the earth tremors, the swelling of th land that severed the matrix of the aqueduct, the disappearance of local springs. All of these were interconnected."

 Again, it plays out like modern James Cameron Titanic film. And like that film, the books eye-rolling romance falls short. A great book to learn about Pompeii and volcanoes, though.