Mick Herron – London Rules

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Book Review, London Rules, Mick Herron, Slough House Book 5, Spy thriller

Official (Mick Herron Avoider of Spoilers) Secrets Act Signed!

Mick Herron’s marvellously funny, horribly plausible, politically too close for comfort, twisty, turny sequence of spooks-on-the-prowl novels continues, all guns effortlessly blazing for another 5 star review with this one.

For those new to Herron’s ‘Slough House, Jackson Lamb’ series, good though Book 5 (this one) is, and despite the fact that yes, each book can be read as a stand-alone, I would strongly, strongly suggest you race away and get the first book in the series, Slow Horses, and then, with increasing immersion and enjoyment, book on book, work your way through Dead Lions, Real Tigers and Spook Street, in order. This one will still be waiting for you, and you will enjoy it even more as you will be meeting old friends and foes, and come to this one with even more pleasure than would have been the case if you began in the middle.

Herron with each book is rather taking on the changing political events that have happened since he wrote the previous book.

His books follow MI5 (his version of it) here cited as ‘Regent’s Park, and the various power struggles that might exist between M15 and the Home Office, not to mention the Prime Minister, and the police, in defence of the Realm.

However – don’t think anything like the glamour world of espionage. Rather, what goes on at the grubby (very grubby) edges. ‘Slough House’ is where those who failed, spectacularly, to make the grade, get shunted, to carry out the tedious work which the glamorous ones will need – the checking of licence plates, the trawl through electoral registers, the watching of hours of video footage. These are the sorry Z listers of MI5. Each of them has a back story, each a present which seems hopeless, each still hopes, somehow, to get back to the cutting edge of spookiness.

The band of marvellous failures are led by a gargantuan figure. Jackson Lamb is Falstaff without the joy, cruel as a shark, savage in his wit, – he comes out of the same reprehensible mould as another much loved monster Gene Hunt from Life of Mars – except, Jackson is far far sharper in devious intelligence.

                       (I couldn’t resist a glance back at the Gene Genie)

In this series Herron has a chilling finger on the button of the dangerous society we are sometimes aware we are living in, whilst managing to crack open the kind of back stabbing, juggles for power and position which we know goes on in large organisations, all wrapped up with cutting edge humour. And a delicious number of twists, turns, feints and dives to have the readers’ jaws dropping over and over. Nothing will be quite what it seems, and Herron will have done something coming out of left field again. And will get this reader, almost every time. Sometimes with an ‘oh no, oh NO’ moment – the life of a spook is a dangerous one, after all – sometimes with a shout of joy at the audaciousness of an event.

For firm fans of the series – the Slow Horse in the spotlight here is geeky Roderick Ho. Against the odds, Ho, imagining himself as the cool, sexy Rodster (this one really does think he is James Bond) has acquired a girl friend. The other horses in the field at the end of book 4, Spook Street, are all in place. And back at ‘Regent Park’ Lady Di, still second desk, is plotting and planning as only she can…….

and with no need to caricature these caricatures, you might just spot not-a-million-miles-away…………………………..

In the world of Westminster and party politics are various figures who might seem more than a little familiar, or conglomerates of such figures. For example, the hail fellow-well met leader of a populist party and a vituperative columnist on a tabloid newspaper who is not at all averse to the spinning of fake news, especially if it will help her man into power. Any resemblance to any real figure is probably quite deliberate………

I received this, very gratefully, as a digital ARC via NetGalley and the publisher, John Murray Books, and sincerely hope Mr Herron is well along with book 6.

London Rules UK
London Rules USA

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Mick Herron – The List

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Book Review, Mick Herron, Spy thriller, The List

Slough House Appetiser before the banquet…..

Whilst waiting for my next big fix – Volume 5 of Mick Herron’s wonderful Jackson Lamb series, I discovered the existence of this small novella. I think there may be more, similar, presumably little bonnes bouches which Herron crafts on the side for impatient fans of the series

Dieter Hess, an elderly agent, run by someone from Regent’s Park, has died. Ferocious, steely Diana Taverner, Number 2 desk, and a brilliant creation in the series, discovers there is more to this than meets the eye. The agent’s handler, John Bachelor someone on the verge of seedy himself (though urbane, sophisticated and classy compared to Jackson Lamb) is terrified of Tavener (isn’t everyone except Lamb?) ‘Lady Di’ as she is known, without affection, makes it clear to Bachelor that any messes resulting from Hess’s death will not be dealt with by her, and Bachelor will pay all prices – it appears Hess may have been a double agent.

Bachelor must come up with a skin-saving solution, and fast.

It was extraordinary, thought Coe, how much a badly dressed shoeless fat man could look like a crocodile

The denizens of Slough House are not really centre stage in this one, though Jackson Lamb and Catherine Standish do memorably appear in an encounter with a rookie agent who Bachelor fingers for his fall guy, just as Tavener has fingered him. Big sharks eat smaller sharks who feast on smaller sharks still

Catherine turned ..”by the way, what is that round your neck?”

“Somebody’s scarf. Found it in the kitchen” . Lamb scratched the back of his neck. “There’s a draught.”

“Yes, keep it on. Don’t want you catching cold.”

She went back to her own office to ring Coe, thinking: So that’s where the tea towel went.

This takes a pleasurable hour to read, and reminds the reader, if they enjoy the teasing twists in this one, how much more nail-biting, heart-breaking, and audacious those twists are likely to get in the full length, London Rules, available early in February.

Not to mention, funny, amongst the darkness, Lamb is a glorious, obscene presence.

Modestly priced on Kindle, seriously overpriced in wood

The List UK
The List USA

John le Carré – Call for the Dead

Tags

Book Review, Call for the Dead, Espionage, John le Carré, Spy thriller, The Cold War

The Freezing Fog of the Cold War : George Smiley 1

Despite being fascinated by espionage – the hidden stuff of it, and the psychology of those who do it, rather than the glitzy Bond aspects – I have somehow never read le Carré, nor seen or heard the TV or radio adaptations of his books.

This, then his first book, is my first outing too with George Smiley, loner, a quiet man, with a private life full of some sorrow, as his rather glamorous, society wife, an unlikely match, has done the more expected thing and run off with a glamour playboy.

Set in the late 50’s/early 60’s, as the Cold War was getting close to freeze point, this is as much a murder mystery as a spy thriller. Smiley recently interrogated a Foreign Office official who had come under the radar of possibly passing information to East Germany. He had been pretty certain that the man, Fennan, was in the clear, and had given him understanding that this would be his conclusion. The interview, an informal one, ended amicably on both sides. Except that Fennan then killed himself, and, even more curiously, posted a letter to Smiley on the same evening requesting a meeting.

The familiar face of George Smiley: Sir Alec Guinness in dry and wintry mode

I found this an interesting and atmospheric read, melancholy, cerebral and with nice and understated humour and a good evocation of time and place, as the following section shows. Smiley has gone to the dead man’s Surrey home, there to try and make sense of events, which do not quite seem to add up :

Merridale Lane is one of those corners of Surrey where the inhabitants wage a remorseless battle against the stigma of suburbia. Trees, fertilized and cajoled into being in every front garden half obscure the poky ‘Character dwellings’ which crouch behind them. The rusticity of the environment is enhanced by the wooden owls that keep guard over the names of houses, and by crumbling dwarves indefatigably posed over goldfish ponds. The inhabitants of Merridale Lane do not paint their dwarves, suspecting this to be a suburban vice

There are some interesting relationships which are clearly quite strong ones, but hidden behind an understated English reserve. Aiding Smiley in his investigations are a couple of professional colleagues, Mendel and Guillam, both of whom go the distance in what is after all, a dangerous pursuit – the hunting down of those who are prepared to kill in the service of a theory and philosophy. There is a subtext of masculine friendships, strong, clearly, but the emotional connections are not spoken about: this is stiff upper lip land, in time and in place. ‘Feeling’ language belongs to Fennan’s widow, Elsa, a German refugee, survivor of the war :

it’s an old illness you suffer from, Mr Smiley………..and I have seen many victims of it. The mind becomes separated from the body; it thinks without reality, rules a paper kingdom and devises without emotion the ruin of its paper victims. But sometimes the division between your world and ours is incomplete; the files grow heads and arms and legs, and that’s a terrible moment, isn’t it. The names have families as well as records, and human motives to explain the sad little dossiers and their make-believe sins….The State is a dream too, a symbol of nothing at all, an emptiness, a mind without a body, a game played with clouds in the sky

There are obviously a lot of wheels within wheels plots to be unravelled, and the reader is in that rather enjoyable place where almost everyone might come under some kind of suspicion. Histories – both personal and the history of conflicts between states and ideologies are under investigation.

James Mason in Sidney Lumet’s The Deadly Affair

This was filmed as ‘The Deadly Affair, directed by Sidney Lumet, and starring James Mason, Simone Signoret and Maximilian Schell, it presumably takes some liberties, not least of which is the renaming of George Smiley as Dobbs

Call for the Dead Amazon UK
Call for the Dead Amazon UK

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

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 – Dead Lions

Tags

Book Review, Dead Lions, Espionage, MI5, Mick Herron, Spy thriller

“Grieve not, rather find strength in what remains behind” (Ode: Intimations of Immortality, Wordsworth)

So………having encountered Mick Herron’s first in his Jackson Lamb series, a bare week or so ago, I was utterly unable to resist downloading and compulsively devouring book 2. And (whispers): it might be even better

In Dead Lions, Mick Herron’s second Slough House/Jackson Lamb series spy thriller, Herron has further sharpened his pencil, turned up the dry wit, turned up the reverses to wrong foot (justifiably) the reader. And he has turned up the shock and the darkness, having softened up the reader by the effortless amusement in the earlier part of the book.

there was something about him, even leaving aside the secondhand clothing, the stained walls, the desperate address. Something off, like that gap between the use by date, and the moment the milk turns

But, be warned, killer punches are coming

Of course I recommend, highly, starting with Book 1,Slow Horses, getting to meet the characters, as different members of the second division of MI5 (or, perhaps even relegated lower than that) will come to the forefront and centre of Herron’s focus, and you will be deepening your knowledge of, and appreciation for, the spooks you meet (old and new) in Dead Lions

However, Herron has constructed his books well, and finds a way to introduce any needed back story and character details for new readers picking up book 2 by chance.

The storyline in this book, published in 2013, has Russia at its centre (and how topical might this be?) But this is a new Russia. Some of the spooks who have been around for a while are still stuck in an old Cold War scenario, where communism and capitalism square up against each other. Russia, as many have noted of late, has moved markedly rightwards, and its interests may no longer be in helping the workers of the world, who have nothing to lose but their chains, to unite.

An old, not very high flying, not very valuable, spook from the days of the fall of the Berlin Wall, sees a face he recognises. This (British) cipher clerk, was too lowly, too incompetent, even to merit deployment to ‘Slough House’ where spooks who have fouled up, get shafted to end their days as pen pushers, CCTV footage perusers, in order for government to avoid redundancy golden handshakes. In the fullness of time, is the thinking, the demoted ones will get fed up, and hand in their notice, saving payouts.

The ex-spook seeing a face from the past decides to trail the man from the other side, he last saw, memorably, at the end of the 80s. And so begins a whole, complex, twisty tangle of information, disinformation, plots, sub-plots, and things which are very much not what they seem.

It is set partly in the epicentre – London, and partly in that most English of English, safe, old fashioned, cosy part of the country, the Cotswolds – though a part of it not quite mainstream tourist destination:

Upshott has no high street, not like those in nearby villages, with their parades of mock-Tudor frontages gracefully declining riverwards….;whose grocery stores offer stem-ginger biscuits and seven kinds of pesto….. Because Upshott doesn’t invite the epithet ‘chocolate boxy’ , so often delivered through gritted teeth. If it resembles any kind of chocolate box, it’s the kind found on the shelf at its only supermarket: coated with dust, its cellophane crackly and yellowing

Some of the characters met in the first book are here again – but some are not. Espionage, even for the Slow Horses of Slough House is a dangerous game. And the more Herron invests the reader in each of the characters he develops, the more, I suspect, will reading subsequent books be a mixture of feverish page turning pleasure – and pain.

Yes. I cried, where I had laughed before.

Book 3 is now downloaded on the eReader, and I have book 4 (the latest) as an ARC Herron is THAT compulsive, THAT good.

Dead Lions won the 2013 CWA Gold Dagger Award, and was a ‘Best Crime Novel of the Year’ for BBC Radio 4’s Front Row, and A Times crime and thriller book of the year. And I wouldn’t argue with any of that

Dead Lions Amazon UK
Dead Lions 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