Books: The Secret Hours by Mick Herron (2023)

“Two years ago, a hostile Prime Minister launched the Monochrome inquiry, investigating "historical over-reaching" by the British Secret Service. Monochrome’s mission was to ferret out any hint of misconduct by any MI5 officer—and allowed Griselda Fleet and Malcolm Kyle, the two civil servants seconded to the project, unfettered access to any and all confidential information in the Service archives in order to do so.  But MI5’s formidable First Desk did not become Britain’s top spy by accident, and she has successfully thwarted the inquiry at every turn. Now the administration that created Monochrome has been ousted, the investigation is a total bust—and Griselda and Malcolm are stuck watching as their career prospects are washed away by the pounding London rain. Until the eve of Monochrome’s shuttering, when an MI5 case file appears without explanation. It is the buried history of a classified operation in 1994 Berlin—an operation that ended in tragedy and scandal, whose cover-up has rewritten thirty years of Service history.”

The plot of this book starts in the present, though about two years before Bad Actors (it is also set in 1994, but we’ll get to that later). Also, in the novella Standing by the Wall (which hinted at the back stories of Jackson Lamb and Molly Doran in Berlin circa 1994), the readers learn about Operation Monochrome inquiry, and in The Secret Hours we learn more of the story behind said inquiry. 

But as noted, this isn’t as simple as it sounds, as Fleet’s and Kyle’s progress has been blocked at every turn (mostly by the First Desk, who is familiar character longtime Herron readers know). That is until a person unknown literately drops another secret file, called OTIS, into Kyle’s lap (or grocery cart). OTIS turns out to be a spy operation in Berlin, after the fall of the Berlin Wall. 

The Monochrome panel is beginning to interview the first OTIS witness –one Alison North who was a new spy back in 1994 and who is sent by David Cartwright to learn about a joe named Brimsley Miles -when Monochrome is shut down. It's clear the government does not want OTIS to become public knowledge. Nevertheless, Griselda and Malcolm fabricate a loophole so they can hear the witness's whole story, which is riveting.  

The Secret Hours is billed as a stand-alone story. And it does work as a stand-alone, but those familiar with the Slough House series will appreciate it all the more. So it can be either an astounding entry point for new readers who can then go on and read the Slough House tales (so spoilers, I guess) or a reward for long-time readers as Herron finally delivers some backstory on some major players within the Slough House universe. 

It’s more dark than main series, but it’s still filled with some of Herron’s trademark snark and poignancy we’ve all come to accept. His look at politics and spies, the tradecraft of both, is frighteningly realistic, the more he goes on:  

“It’s fiddling while the city burns, isn’t? Look at Green Shoots…I mean, we barley know which way we should be facing. Looking under stones for the next bomb factory, or over our shoulders for whichever Downing Street heavyweight you’ve –we’ve- pissed off.” 

“It’s not the colour of the money, though is it? it’s handling over control of services to people who shouldn’t have it.” 

Also, in case ever need to make a fast getaway, here are the contents of a flight kit: a passport with a fake name; a grand in cash; two prepaid credit cards worth 5,000 Euros; one change of clothing; a basic toiletries kit that includes hair dye and tinted contact lenses; and a pair of insoles that will alter your gait enough to fool a camera.

Books: Standing By the Wall (Slough House 8.5) by Mick Herron (2022)

“Roddy Ho is used to being the one the slow horses turn to when they need miracles performed, and he’s always been Jackson Lamb’s Number Two.  So when Lamb has a photograph that needs doctoring, it’s Ho he entrusts with the task.  Christmas is a time for memories, but Lamb doesn’t do memories – or so he says.  But what is it about the photo that makes him want to alter it?  How would the slow horses cope if Roddy Ho did not exist?  And most importantly of all, are the team having Christmas drinks, and if so, where? 

Standing by the Wall is (currently) the last novella that Slough House creator Mick Herron has written. Here we see Roddy Ho, the teams punching bag (99.0% deserved) of weirdness and (in Ho’s mind), Jackson Lamb’s Number Two, the Q to this small clown car of slow horses, the apparent lynchpin for Slough Houses entire “success”, demanded by Lamb to alter a photograph of three people. Basically remove the center figure. Who that person is –that’s not revealed- but the one on the left is a much younger Jackson Lamb and the other Molly Dornan, the Park’s archivist and –perhaps- Lamb’s only friend. 

The other part is a setup for the return of River Cartwright, who was apparently left for dead at the end of book seven. We learn that River was dosed with novichok, a family of nerve agents developed by the Soviet Union and Russia between 1971 and 1993. He’s still has a few weeks left before returning to duty, but because it was Christmas, he felt this was a good chance to see his friends and meet the newest recruit, Ashley. But it’s clear he has some reservations here, mostly because his relationship with Sid has grown. 

There is also, apparently a reference to Operation Monochrome, which appears to be link to his stand-alone spy thriller Secret Hours. 

Otherwise, Lamb is Lamb and it’ll be interesting if this picture will tie into a later novel. But it also serves as another glimpse into Lamb’s murky past. 

Which bring me to the short story Last Dead Letter (which is set just after David Cartwright’s funeral in the novel Joe Country). Here is another glimpse into Lamb’s past. 

”Molly Dornan is there waiting to extract her pound of flesh from Jackson Lamb for an earlier favor. In this case, it’s learning the truth to a story Dornan has found in her precious archives. She’s put most of the pieces together but needs Lamb for the last bits of the puzzle. Molly enjoys closing off those unknown loops in her files wherever possible. The tale she tells is of “Dominic Cross”, an agent runner in Berlin, he’s a little crooked and drinks too much but always looks after his joes. Cross is a veteran of the spy game, but been in Berlin too long. He makes the misjudgment that many spies seem to make – he falls in love. When the Stasi opposition finds a way to turn this against him the question becomes whether he can find a way out of the devil’s choice he’s been given. Does he choose the life of his lover or his joe?” 

For a short story, the Last Dead Letter gives us a lot of information to parse through. Here Herron creates a pretty good atmosphere of Cold War Berlin and as you read, you get a sense that this Cross is really Lamb (but while the whole series is just a variation on themes presented before, I had hoped that this was one trope Herron would avoid – the British spy who falls for the German spy). And I can guess this was Herron’s attempt at giving his long-time readers, who are eager to learn of more of Lamb’s life before Slough House, a reason to read the tale. But there is a twist, as always, and we learn really nothing more beyond the fact that even some forty years earlier, Cross called his watcher The Shit.  

Like all the novellas and this short story, they are not necessary reads. But for those completists out there, these tales are like bits of candy in small packages, but sometimes, usually at the end, they turn tart.