Mick Herron – Spook Street

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Book Review, Espionage, Jackson Lamb series, Mick Herron, Slough House Book 4, Spook Street, Spy thriller

Fantastic, breathtaking, audacious and exhausting – but read the series in order for maximum enjoyment

Introducing Slough House and the Slow Horses for those coming to the series via Book 4 I though I strongly suggest, starting with book 1, and getting to this one in sequence:

The series follows a group of Z lister sppoks, and also the high fliers of the A listers of MI5, who run policy and do the high octane stuff. Slough House is where former MI5 personnel, who have fouled up in some way either through character defects or evidence of some kind of incompetence, are put out to paid grass. Someone has to do the boring stuff of videocam checks, and trawl through vehicle licence plates and phone records, and getting the disgraced ‘Slow Horses’ to do this, stops redundancy pay outs and legal cases. Chances are, the Slow Horse will resign due to extreme tedium, hence, no payout, and there will always be others to demote to Horsedom. To a man and woman, the Slow Horses regret their prior high flying status, and hope against hope that some kind of saving the world and defence of the realm activity will come their way, and they might, therefore return to the fold of MI5. In their own way, each of this fascinating group of misfits is more than capable

They are led by a monstrous, Rabelasian (at least in turns of various odoriferous bodily emissions and capacity to indulge alcohol, junk food and tobacco) man, Jackson Lamb. Lamb is the least lamb like creature imaginable. Irascible, bullying, grubby, obnoxious and lethal, sharp as a whole army of lasers and with, despite his lack of obvious appeal, a great loyalty to the band of ‘joes’ he rules and insults. Despite the drudgery of desk work, the Slow Horses are still involved in dangerous activities. Over the course of the books some have died, new characters have come to take their places, and some, there from the start, are still with us, though the danger of their work makes the reader wonder from whence the heartache of losing a strange old friend from an earlier book, will come

Herron brings different Horses into the leaders of each book’s race, and some characters met much earlier might be very very slow horses, waiting their turn to gallop to the death or marginal glory finish.

Central to this book is the aging David Cartwright. Almost ‘First Desk’ during the Cold War, he is now living in quiet retirement in the country, beginning to slide into dementia. An elderly spook, becoming loose lipped and garrulous might have dangerous secrets to unwittingly spill. And there might be several interested in plugging such a leak before it happens.

I must confess to some small disappointment with the previous book in the series, Real Tigers, though not disappointed enough to not want to proceed on to the next.

Dazzle Ship – H.M.S. President

Very happily, Spook Street has gone stratospheric in my estimation. So stratospheric that I had to stop reading at times because Herron had taken me to a place where I hardly dared to advance, because of fear and grief of what might be to come. A writer does something particularly brilliant when they take a reader to a place of ‘in denial’ – I don’t think I can bear to know more, I can’t bear to not know. Suspense, anxiety, on the edge.

All through the series, from the very first page of Slow Horses, Herron has thrown justified shocks, surprises, feints, and reverses at his readers. This one though, has him pretty well surpassing himself, because, of course, we are now invested in each Slow Horse.

As ever I can’t give any information (or very little) on this one, as each reader deserves to read in innocence, in order to get the greatest level of involvement and commitment to each of Herron’s wonderful cast of characters

As in book 3 the main focus from which danger and bad deeds arise is internal – from within the organisation itself, where various individuals struggle for higher status and power over others. Some of the usual suspects are still to be found within MI5, but others are on the rise or fall. Danger of course also lurks without, from those who seek to undermine the system, but some of those within have shady ways of protecting the system, and shadier ways still of protecting their own selves.

The Horses themselves, flawed, flatulent, antisocial and strange as they may be, are still the ones with moral compasses – more than others who stalk these pages, they have a loyalty to each other, however much each of them may violently dislike or despise a fellow Horse

And London itself, as so often, is a major character in this book, in both her grime and her splendour

I am minded, whilst we now have a protracted wait whilst Herron decides how much further to ride his horses, to start a prior series by him, following the fortunes of a private detective, but with, no doubt his trademark signatures of sharp writing, wit, danger, strong characterisation, twisty plot – and surprises a plenty

I received this, as a serendipitous ARC from Amazon Vine. It certainly looked like an example of meaningful targeting as I bought books 1,2, and 3 in the series in extremely rapid succession. Payback time now though…as this one has only recently been published…now all I can do is wait. I hope Herron is writing, writing, writing

Spook Street Amazon UK
Spook Street Amazon USA

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Mick Herron – Real Tigers

Tags

Book Review, Espionage, Jackson Lamb series, Mick Herron, Real Tigers, Slough House Book 3, Spy thriller

A little more formulaic than the earlier outings

Being so entranced by Mick Herron’s Slough House series, which I discovered early this year, has had its down-side. Real Tigers, the third of (so far) 4, has been read pretty quickly after reading book 2, which was almost instantaneously dived into after finishing book 1.

Normally, readers will be waiting eagerly for the next to come out, and may well have forgotten an author’s tics or tricks. Not so, this way of reading.

The last time I was feverishly sucked into total immersion by an author, was by Irish writer, Tana French’s Dublin Murder Squad series, a couple of years ago. I read all of French’s long books, – at that time, 5 of them within an intense 6 weeks. And I have to say that French survived this immersion fabulously, as I did not ever feel ‘oh, that routine again’

Where she scores and where Herron just misses, is that French does not stay with the same central cast of characters, who must either develop or recycle themselves into their own predictability. Using the Murder Squad as a pool, or chorus, each of her books features a couple of members of that squad taking a place in the spotlight. She might allow some of the detectives more than one outing, even more than one outing in some kind of central position, but her characters don’t outstay their welcome, and, anyway, are dynamic, shifting, developing.

Whilst Herron, in his wonderfully tense’second team’ espionage books, does keep some kind of unpredictable page turning going, the challenge is, his central players stay the same, and the most archetypal,verge-of-caricature ones, can begin to feel as if they are running through their own grooves, merely driving them a little more predictably. So, in Real Tigers, it is the grossly unregenerate Jackson Lamb – flatulent, autocratic, bullying and disgustingly grubby, who comes off the worst. By book 3, I was well aware that we were heading up to another fart gag, another description of Lamb’s far from fragrant aromatic ambience/ Likewise, sex-obsessed, but permanently sex-denied, geeky Roderick Ho continues to be a butt of some rather similar jokes and put downs.

I suspect I might have enjoyed Real Tigers rather more if I had read it at the time of publication, after waiting eagerly having finished book 2. Dead Lions, at its publication.

Nonetheless, Real Tigers, which has as its central motif the dark doings and power struggles within M15 itself, rather than the dangers posed by external villainry, was a still enjoyable and page turning divertissement, and Herron still gives lots of unpredictable excitement and surprises in the journey. But also, more clichés. There is a prolonged version of a Shoot-Out at the Okay Corral, and I did find it less than credible because I was always aware that I was reading that trope, which went on far too long.

As an aside, I continue to be quite amazed that (as far as I know) Herron has never been sued by the current denizen of the Foreign Office. Set after the 2015 election, but before the referendum, Peter Judd, (PJ) Home Secretary, a devious, bombastic, floppy haired egomaniac with manic ambition, ever prepared to plot and plan and shift with the wind in order to achieve his dream to become PM, is not so much a thinly disguised Boris Johnson, as one completely without disguise!

The most interesting character in this one, and one who has been developing across the books, is Catherine Standish, Jackson Lamb’s PA.

I do recommend this – but also, recommend leaving decent gaps between the books!

Unfortunately though, this book follows reasonably hard on the heels of my last blog review, as though I have read several other titles in the last few weeks, not one of them was any better than ‘okay’ in my estimation, so have been un-reviewed here. The only one which will get blog space is so far in advance of publication that it will do the book no service to be blogged about for a couple of months. So its Herron and Herron!
Real Tigers Amazon UK
Real Tigers Amazon USA

Mick Herron – Slow Horses

Tags

Book Review, Espionage, Jackson Lamb series, MI5, Mick Herron, Slow Horses, Spooks, Spy thriller

Borstal for spies; Herron trips, feints and cleverly deceives the reader every step of the way

Mick Herron’s Slow Horses, the first book in a series set in ‘Slough House’ a kind of transfer to the bottom stream for spooks from MI5 who have made mistakes, is stunning. Absolutely stunning.

This is a highly intelligent, tautly written, compulsive page-turner, with a plot as highly charged and twisty turny as any reader could want, wonderfully complex, believable characters, and founded in a reality which seems terrifyingly plausible. It is bloody, violent – and, at times, very very funny.

He was aiming for a carefree delivery, with about as much success as Gordon Brown

I have found my series to compulsively read on – book 4 comes out this year and I’ve been fortunate to have bagged a copy as an ARC, but, 2 and 3 will be read in order first – if I can stop the dizzy spin I’m left in, reading this one.

The unfortunate challenge of writing a review, is that really, there is almost nothing I wish to say about plot – or even the cast of characters, because the best way to read this is to know as little as possible about the journey, other than to make it.

All that might be useful to know, is that the title, ‘Slow Horses’ is a kind of dismissive word play, accorded to the Z lister spooks, fallen from grace, who now work at Slough House. One and all, they were operatives who, for different reasons, had been attracted to the boxing-at-shadows work of MI5, recruited for their spook-needed skills, trained for this, but, in each case somehow failed the grade, dropped a catch, failed to tick the right box. Now, they all do the grunt work associated with counter terrorism, the endless checking of videocams, CCTV, paper trails. And all are resentful and yearn to be back at the high, respected levels of the job.

The only name I will provide is that of Jackson Lamb – as in, this is the first in Herron’s Jackson Lamb series. He heads up the crew of misfits, who have ended up here. Bullying, and shambolic, disliked by his subordinates and superiors, he is none the less as devious, intelligent, astute at pulling wool over eyes and mastering dissimulation as a spook must be.

He resembled, someone had once remarked, Timothy Spall gone to seed (which left open the question of what Timothy Spall not gone to seed might look like)

Having finished this one, I have no real idea where Herron might go with the later books in the series. My instinct is that we will certainly be meeting some of the ‘Slow Horses’ denizens of Slough House – not to mention the MI5 high flier section, – again, and I suspect different characters will, in subsequent books, come into sharper relief, and take place centre stage. In this, the closet parallel I can find is to the magnificent Tana French, who does a similar ‘Greek tragedy chorus’ effect with her Dublin Murder Squad series – each book focuses on different central characters in the squad, some of whom may have made passing appearances earlier, and are now centre stage, and may well pass through again in a later book, as a minor character in someone else’s story. When I first found French, I did a kind of total immersion and read all her books in the space of 6 weeks.

I can see myself heading the same way with Herron.

But, I have to hold back from saying even the most basic about plot, or other central characters beside Lamb because Herron starts the dissimulation and confounds the reader’s expectations right from the start, and you will be best pleased to read as an innocent, without knowing or second guessing in advance.

this particular block seemed ordinary enough in the early morning, with its shared entrance and its buzzer system that blinked continuously. Only the sign promising CCTV coverage hinted at Big Brother’s world, but signs were cheaper than the actual thing. The UK might be the most surveilled society in the world, but that was on the public purse, and building management companies generally preferred the cheaper option of hanging a fake camera

All I will say is that none of the sleights of hand, the cutting between different stories all heading in the same direction, deviously and twistily, is a gratuitous authorial series of tricks, coinicidences too far etc. The territory of the book, after all is one where no one is quite what they seem, because the territory of intelligence, counter-intelligence and their friends and enemies is, of its nature – hidden, deceptive, shadowy.

However…..this book was first published in 2010. There is a remarkably foresighted view of the future, and a thinly disguised character readers will ‘enjoy’ recognising. I guffawed out loud on a silent tube carriage………….Of course, humour gets laced with horror these days.

I wonder what else Herron is predicting in later books in the series, and sincerely hope book 4 (published in 2017) won’t have World War 3 in mid-throes.

Slow Horses Amazon UK
Slow Horses Amazon USA