Tag Archives: London

An Aggravating Amount of Paperwork

The promotional materials for any novel in Mick Herron’s Slough House series must include one reference to Herron being the John LeCarre of current spy novelists. Peruse the press for Slough House, Herron’s seventh installment in that popular series, and you’ll easily find it. No, not on that page. Go back a few pages . . . stop . . . no, one more . . . there it is.

The lazy and frivolous compliment is an insult to both. LeCarre was a savant who elevated the spy novel to art. Herron is a master entertainer with a sharp eye for absurdity and an acerbic tongue. They’re only the same in terms of their intentionality. Herron is intentionally funny. LeCarre is intentionally not.

LeCarre is the master of ceremonies in the spy fiction genre, and there is justice in that. Genius will always be welcome at any literary feast. But what about the talented and amusing entertainer? Shouldn’t that writer get a prominent seat and full plate as well?

Herron’s Slough House certainly qualifies as entertaining. Even better, in terms of storytelling, it’s one of the stronger installments in the series. It’s fast and fun to read. If you’re unfamiliar with the novels, Slough House is where Britain’s MI5 puts its Slow Horses – those incompetent, unlucky, or annoying spies that the service doesn’t want to deal with anymore. Slough House is where they work under the insufferable Jackson Lamb, a hilarious HR nightmare. The hope is these agents will become so bored they decide to quit, because firing people involves an aggravating amount of paperwork.

This installment opens with MI5 celebrating another “bold new enterprise.” That’s usually bad news for the Slow Horses. And, sure enough, Slough House has been erased from MI5’s database. The Slow Horses are still getting paid but otherwise it’s like they never existed. As with everything they do, the Slow Horses can’t decide whether they care about it or not.

This is probably unrelated, but a certain Russian dictator has sanctioned a hit on a double-agent Russia swapped with Britain. MI5’s “bold new enterprise” is a revenge killing. Putin now wants tat for that tit, and someone has informed him that the Slow Horses are skilled assassins. Now two of them are dead. Others are being tracked, as if they might be next. Slow Horses are experts at nothing, but “once the label’s been applied, the facts cease to matter.” So it’s the Slow Horses up against Russian-trained assassins in cynical London where no one can be trusted, especially the people who are supposedly on your side. I wonder who will win. The reader, of course.

Gladiola Overdrive, Chief Editor

Ripped From the Headlines

London Rules is the fifth installment in Mick Herron’s Slough House series, and once again he asks what does Britain do when James Bond is on holiday? It turns to the Slow Horses, of course – that woeful group of misfits and losers who’ve been relegated to MI5’s dusty top shelf where they will hopefully either retire or die from boredom.

These novels have a ripped from the headlines feel, and London Rules is no different. It opens with an armed assault on a defenseless Derbyshire village. Twelve men, women, and children are murdered, and ISIS, much to MI5’s relief, immediately takes credit. It’s always good to have outsiders to blame, but these days, when a spy agency wants to blame outsiders for something hideous, you better take a close look at what the insiders are doing. Soon, another attack happens, and more are promised.

It’s not London Rules because London is ruling anything anymore. That was long ago. No, the title refers to rules of behavior that MI5 never strays from. “London Rules were written down nowhere, but everyone knew rule one.” It’s cover your ass, but because this is merry old England, they say arse. Oh, those silly Brits. I swear. Sometimes, it’s like they aren’t even talking English.

Anyway, it’s going to be hard for MI5 to cover its ass when the terrorists are operating from a playbook it wrote. As the head of MI5 observes, the terrorists are using “our own imperial past as kerosene. It’s the propaganda coup to end them all.” Fortunately, MI5 can pull the Slow Horses from the shelf, dust them off, and saddle them with all the blame when inevitably everything blows up. Oh, and by the way, someone is trying to kill Roddy Ho, the Slow Horses’ IT guru. But, of course, that makes for a long list of suspects, all of whom may be acting out of a deep sense of civic duty.

The Slough House series isn’t a success because Herron crafts meticulous plots laden with psychological drama. The plots are serviceable and there is suspense, but those are secondary to the maliciously fun characters and the delightfully acerbic humor. The standout character is Jackson Lamb, who’s always in “his hippo-at-rest position: apparently docile, but you wouldn’t want to get too close.” Roddy Ho has also emerged as one of the more entertaining characters in the series, which brings me to the problem with London Rules. Roddy Ho disappears one third of the way through, and Jackson Lamb is also missing in large chunks of the story. London Rules is still a fun read, but it doesn’t have as much of the misanthropic joy driving the earlier installments.

Gladiola Overdrive, Chief Editor

Get Me the Slow Horses

If you like spy novels and you’re not reading Mick Herron’s Slough House series, what’s wrong with you? Are you consumed with self-loathing? Are you mean to children? Not obnoxious children. I have no problem with that. I’m referring to nice children. Do you enjoy treating nice children badly?

This isn’t me asking. It’s my neighbor. She loves this series, and she has excellent taste. I love the series too, but my taste is suspect.

Spook Street is the fourth installment in the series. It brings back Jackson Lamb, the delightfully acerbic and misanthropic head of the slow horses, a group of British MI5 spies who’ve fairly or unfairly been relegated to Slough House because they’re misfits, losers, or nuisances. Slough House is “where they sent you when they wanted you to go away, but didn’t want to sack you in case you got litigious about it.” When there’s an emergency and national security is at risk, no one yells “Get me the slow horses.”

Still, national emergencies happen in Britain and somehow the slow horse get tangled up in them. Much to the reader’s relief, that’s what happens once again in Spook Street. The story opens with a bomb going off in a London mall on January 1st. Forty people are killed including the suicide bomber. It should be a straightforward investigation for the real spies at MI5, but it looks like a group secretly funded by a MI5 legend, who’s now retired and has dementia, might be involved. Slough House is pulled in because the MI5 legend is the grandfather of a slow horse.

The slow horses are now on Spook Street, and “When you lived on Spook Street you wrapped up tight: watched every word, guarded every secret.” These are things the slow horses aren’t good at, and MI5 desperately wants to keep all of this a secret. But here’s the “First law of Spook Street. Secrets don’t stay secret.”

Spook Street is another fast paced installment in the Slough House series, and it’s a pleasure to read. But beware, these stories have a body count, and Mick Herron has no problem sending slow horses out to pasture with a bullet.

Gladiola Overdrive, Chief Editor

London Fields: Sex, Death, and Darts!

Martin Amis’ London Fields was published in 1989, and its obsession with the end of the millennium is humorously bleak. Or is it bleakly humorous? I don’t know. But there are other obsessions in the book, too. Oddly (to an American), darts is one. So is death. And sex. Definitely sex. And death. Definitely death.

The story is a disturbing love quadrangle. Keith Talent is a violent, misogynistic cheat. Guy Clinch is an inept, credulous romantic. Samson (Sam) Young is an author. And because this is a “modern” novel, he is also the narrator, but he is not “one of those excitable types who get caught making things up.” So does that mean he’s honest? Or does it mean he’s never been caught lying?

Nicola Six (think Sex) is the black hole these men don’t try to escape. When she was a child, she had an imaginary friend named Enola Gay, and Enola had a little boy. Yeah, Mr Amis does not paint with pastels.

Nicola has always been able to sense when something will happen, so she knows she will be murdered on her 35th birthday. She’s looking forward to it. Oh, yes, nearly forgot – the world, and everything in it, is shabby. Except Nicola. She’s resplendent and wants to die.

From the beginning we know who the murderer is. We also know Nicola is the “murderee” (she is definitely not the victim), and we know when she will be killed. As Sam explains, the story is not a “whodunit”. It’s a “whydoit”. It succeeds either way.

But why is Nicola obsessed with death? Is she heart-broken? Is she bored? What does Nicola say about it? “I am a male fantasy figure. I’ve been one for fifteen years. It really takes it out of a girl.”

Nicola is every sexual fantasy men have. But is she just drawn that way? Like Jessica Rabbit in Who Framed Roger Rabbit. We only see her through Sam’s filter. When Nicola reads a chapter Sam has written about her, she doesn’t recognize herself. But that doesn’t matter to Sam. It’s how he sees her, and he’s writing the story. So does Nicola welcome death because she’s too good for this shabby world? Or is it the only way out of a story in which she does not recognize herself?

Gladiola Overdrive, Chief Editor

Introducing Shakespeare’s Wife

The title of Maggie O’Farrell’s book, Hamnet, informs you the story is about Hamnet Shakespeare. The hanging descriptor below the title disagrees. It says this is A Novel of the Plague. Both are disgusting lies.

OK – perhaps that’s an over-reaction. Ms. O’Farrell’s story does mention Hamnet and the plague frequently, but this is Anne Hathaway’s story, even though in the novel she is referred to as Agnes – the name her father called her. And as with Shakespeare’s comedies and tragedies where the women are the most intriguing characters (with the exceptions of King Lear and Hamlet), Agnes is the star.

Agnes is a healer. She specializes in herbs and natural remedies. Her uncommon knowledge and skills are welcome and worrisome. To the Stratford villagers, it is known that Agnes is “fierce and savage, that she puts curses on people, that she can cure anything but also cause anything.” Shakespeare’s mother describes Agnes as “[t]his creature, this woman, this elf, this, sorceress, this forest sprite”. So she’s a feminist.

To Shakespeare, she is “peerless”. But she is not to be trifled with. She is “[s]omeone who knows everything about you, before you even know it yourself. Someone who can just look at you and divine your deepest secrets, just with a glance.”

Hamnet is a slow burn. It is set mostly in a sleepy and suffocating (for Shakespeare) Stratford. At times the story drags, but the themes of motherhood and grief are vital. They drive the story to a touching and satisfying conclusion.

So much mythology surrounds Shakespeare, but little is actually known about him. Much less is known about his family. This gives a talented novelist like Ms. O’Farrell an advantage. She can create these characters, make them real, and no one can quibble with her. Wisely, she never mentions Shakespeare’s name. That would only distract the reader with the myth. And this story isn’t about him anyway.

Gladiola Overdrive, Chief Editor