Book #43 Slow Horses

Slow Horses by Mick Herron
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

How on earth do you walk in the footsteps of Len Deighton, Graham Greene and John Le Carré? Well, if you are Mick Herron, you don't. You write a new spy novel with such authority, such authenticity and a touch of black humour that left me dazzled. How do you think up Slough House and its band of "slow horses"? What a wonderful play on words! Slough House - the backwater of MI5. Where, as a spook, you finish up when you have screwed up, big time. Debunked from the achievers at Regent's Park. A bunch of misfits. Spending days listening to endless tapes of banal chit-chat on social media and mobile 'phones in the hopeless task of finding something that registers a sniff of information that might be worth reporting to Regent's Park. Making coffee, counting paper clips, set adrift in a sea of incompetence.

Wait a minute. Are these "slow horses" so incompetent? You are one of Jackson Lamb's crew. You are highly trained joes and you are not going to sit around just pushing paper. You didn't join the Intelligence Service to be a "slow horse". So watch out, Regent's Park, when a boy is kidnapped and held hostage and his beheading is scheduled for live broadcast on the internet. Despite the instructions from the Service, the slow horses aren't going to just sit quiet and watch....

A delicious piece of skulduggery combined with an intimate knowledge of 'The Service', twists galore, a bunch of 'joes' stirred into action and a protagonist, that might be 'getting on', might be overweight, but still has a forensic mind to out-spook the spooks! Jackson Lamb, Head of Slough House, a latter day reincarnation of the darker side of George Smiley. This is a fabulous British spy novel with an intricate plot and believable characters. I did at times have trouble following who was who; I should have made notes as I read! Definitely though, a spy novel for our time.



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