Slow Horses by Mick Herron

 

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You can buy "Slow Horses".....Here

You can follow Mick Herron....Here

The Blurb....

You don't stop being a spook just because you're no longer in the game.

Banished to Slough House from the ranks of achievers at Regent's Park for various crimes of drugs and drunkenness, lechery and failure, politics and betrayal, Jackson Lamb's misfit crew of highly trained joes don't run ops, they push paper.

But not one of them joined the Intelligence Service to be a 'slow horse'.

A boy is kidnapped and held hostage. His beheading is scheduled for live broadcast on the net. And whatever the instructions of the Service, the slow horses aren't going to just sit quiet and watch . .

My Review...

Wow, what a book. Le Carre for the modern age. 

I chose this book after hearing Mark Billingham recommend it on a pod cast.

Slough House is where MI5 keep the "slow horses," operatives who have been black balled but for some reason or other but can't be sacked. A departure lounge where MI5 give them mind-numbingly dull tasks until they quit the service of their own accord. Their number include River Cartwright grandson of a once senior MI5 operative.

 

The head of Slough House is Jackson Lamb a disgraced senior veteran, who eventually sort of acts as Cartwright's mentor in a dysfunctional way. 

The Slow Horses have some minor involvement in a watching brief operation that blows up in their faces and the motley crew of the has beens, never was and never will be realise they are being set up. They must work together to save the victim and themselves.

This is a really good book. If Le Carre was a young man now, this is what he would be writing. I read Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy and Smiley's people by Le Carre when I was in school and thoroughly enjoyed being in that world with it's own jargon of "moles," "lamplighters" and "the Circus" etc. Herron achieves the same immersion in the world of spies but with an updated vocabulary "dogs, achievers, Joes" and it is still fascinating but I think Herron offers a more modern, even more cynical and sardonic edge than the Master Le Carre. 

When I read this book it reminded me of when Daniel Craig took over as James Bond in Casino Royale. A well worn old favourite genre suddenly had new life blasted right through it. 

The plot is fascinating, all double crosses, back up plans and surprises. The characters are great too. Jackson Lamb is likely to answer a question from the head of the Security Services with a fart. What can I say, He is my type of guy. I saw on twitface that Gary Oldman was to play him in a forthcoming Netflix thingee. Obvs a great actor but Lamb is packing a bit of timber. Had a think and came up with an extensive list! Robbie Coltrane, Stephen Fry, Nick Frost, Tom Wilkinson, Hugh Bonnevile.

The top brass are wary of him, the Slow Horses loathe him. In a progressive work environment he would be fired for bullying and not even the passive aggressive kind! A proper grumpy old man of an anti hero. 

If you like spy novels (or even if you don't) I thoroughly recommend this book

Selected Quotes...

"Half of the future is buried in the past. That was the prevailing Service culture. Hence the obsessive sifting of twice-ploughed ground, attempting to understand history before it came round again." 

"If Moscow rules meant watch your back, London rules meant cover your arse. Moscow rules had been written on the streets, but London rules were devised in the corridors of Westminster, and the short version read: someone always pays. Make sure it isn’t you."

"Lamb’s laugh wasn’t a genuine surrender to amusement; more of a temporary derangement. Not a laugh you’d want to hear from anyone holding a stick."

"When she held the compact closer to her face, she could trace damage under the skin; see the lines through which her youth had leaked."

About the Author...

Mick Herron is a British novelist and short-story writer who was born in Newcastle and studied English at Oxford. He is the author of six books in the Slough House series (Slow Horses, Dead Lions, Real Tigers, Spook Street, London Rules, and the novella The List) and four Oxford mysteries (Down Cemetery Road, The Last Voice You Hear, Why We Die, and Smoke and Whispers), as well as the standalone novels Reconstruction, Nobody Walks, and This Is What Happened. His work has won the CWA Gold Dagger for Best Crime Novel, the Steel Dagger for Best Thriller, and the Ellery Queen Readers Award, and been nominated for the Macavity, Barry, Shamus, and Theakstons Novel of the Year Awards. He currently lives in Oxford and writes full-time.