Slow Horses by Mick Herron

The Blurb On The Back:

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 internet.

And whatever the instructions of the Service, the slow horses aren’t going to just sit quiet and watch …

( The Review (Cut For Spoilers): )

The Verdict:

The first in Mick Herron’s JACKSON LAMB SERIES is a smartly written, fast-paced espionage thriller with some great one-liners, a dark sense of humour and an overall vibe of SPOOKS meets Le Carre. The misfit cast of slow horses are broadly drawn (notably Roderick Ho, a stereotypical computer geek with no social skills) but all develop over the course of the book. River and Lamb get the most attention and there are hints of intriguing elements in both their backgrounds, which promises much for later books although Lamb’s personal habits are overdone. The plot itself is well crafted with plenty of twists and turns and I particularly enjoyed the way the plot incorporates the internal politics and ambitions of those within the Intelligence Service and the political classes (especially Peter Judd, a sly dig at a certain floppy haired Foreign Secretary) plus Herron is unsentimental at killing characters who you might think would become integral to the wider series. I also enjoyed the focus that Herron gives to Hassan Ahmed (the kidnapping victim who just wants to be a stand up comedian) whose ordeal gives the book emotional resonance. All in all I thoroughly enjoyed this book and will definitely be reading the sequel.

Dead Lions by Mick Herron

The Blurb On The Back:

Dickie Bow is not an obvious target for assassination.

But once a spook, always a spook. And Dickie was a talented streetwalker back in the day, before he turned up dead on a bus. A shadow. Good at following people, bringing home their secrets.

Dickie was in Berlin with Jackson Lamb. Now Lamb’s got his phone, and on it the last secret Dickie ever told, and reason to believe an old-time Moscow-style op is being run in the Service’s back yard.

In the Intelligence Service purgatory that is Slough House, Jackson Lamb’s crew of back-office no-hopers is about to go live …

( The Review (Cut For Spoilers): )

The Verdict:

The second in Mick Herron’s JACKSON LAMB SERIES is another fast-paced, twisting spy thriller with Cold War roots, a dark sense of humour, sassy one-liners and a cheerful willingness to kill characters just as you’re starting to love them. What makes this series stand out is the way Herron brings his different plot strands together in a fluid way that combines Cold War paranoia with modern worries and motivations to keep the reader hooked. I love the machinations of Lady Di Taverner and Lamb’s ability to counter them, River’s relationship with the O.B. (who injects the Cold War history but only gives information up to a point) and I also enjoyed the way that the Slough House team is slowly coming together and Catherine’s role in achieving that (with Catherine rapidly becoming my favourite character by being the calm, ordered counterpoint to Lamb’s offensive chaos). The two newcomers – Shirley Dander and Marcus Longridge – have promise and Ho’s more stereotypical attributes are slowly softening. Herron is brutal with his character deaths and I was very surprised by the ones in this book and am intrigued to see the effects in the future books. I still think Lamb’s personal habits are overdone but that’s the only bum note (no pun intended) in the book and I will definitely read the next in this series.