Tag Archives: Spies

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

Tiger by the Tail

In Real Tigers, the third installment in his entertaining Slough House series, Mick Herron asks one important question. Can you tell the difference between a real tiger and a paper tiger? The answer better be yes, or you may end up dead, dead, dead. At least that’s what happens in this diverting page turner.

Slough House is where Britain’s MI5 dumps its slow horses, spies who are either cursed, incompetent, unlikeable, or addicted to something. Then it gives them nothing to do. The delightfully malevolent Jackson Lamb is the foul-smelling misanthrope in charge of Slough House. He is roused from his alcohol-aided slumbers when one of his team goes missing.

Catherine Standish leaves Slough House one intolerably hot evening and runs into an old MI5 colleague. She gets nervous because there’s no “friend falser than another spook.” Minutes later she is lifted from the street and thrown into a black van. Was that meeting on the street just a coincidence? Sure, why not?

Here’s another coincidence. Peter Judd, Britain’s home secretary, has hired a tiger team to infiltrate MI5 and test its internal defenses. Judd is a messy mop-haired scamp – a “public buffoon and private velociraptor.” If you’re thinking Boris Johnson, congratulations. You’ve connected the very obvious dots. He’s in a power struggle with MI5’s first desk and its second desk. They’re all rivals, and they hate each other. But he has a secret plan that will cage his rivals, and the tiger team is going to help.

Poor Judd. A few ex-soldiers on the tiger team have their own plans, and they don’t play ball with their corporate overlords. Slough House is brought in to help clean the mess or, in the alternative, be blamed for it. And they still need to find Catherine.

It’s best not to think too hard about the plot. It’s unnecessarily convoluted and doesn’t withstand much scrutiny. However, you don’t read Slough House novels for intense psychological drama and seamlessly constructed plots. You read them because they’re fun. The characters are deliciously petty and only begrudgingly helpful. As the story reaches its bloody conclusion, we learn who’s real and who’s paper.

Gladiola Overdrive, Chief Editor

Dead Lions: Worst Children’s Game Ever

Dead Lions is the second spy novel in Mick Herron’s Slough House series. The first one, Slow Horses, was a great romp about a small group of disgraced MI5 spies who get sent to Slough House. They’re given nothing to do, and the hope is they will simply quit. I thoroughly enjoyed Slow Horses, so I was prepared to be disappointed. You know, that sophomore slump thing. If you’ve seen the Indiana Jones movies, you understand. I didn’t need to worry. Dead Lions delivers though the ending is anti-climatic. The enemy’s ultimate goal doesn’t seem to justify the effort required. But it’s still a fun ride.

A middling spy from the Cold War era turns up dead on a bus near Oxford. Jackson Lamb, the head of Slough House, knew him from his Berlin days. He decides to investigate and finds the dead man’s cell phone hidden on the bus. An unsent message reads Cicadas, which refers to a myth about the Soviets planting undercover spies in England. These spies would fully assimilate and do nothing untoward for years or even decades until Moscow would finally give them an assignment that would devastate the country. Here’s the catch. MI5 long ago determined the Cicada program was a false flag. It only existed as a myth. But now there is this dead old spy on a bus. Slough House has a new assignment. And, remember, “When lions yawn, it doesn’t mean they’re tired. It means they’re waking up.”

Slow Horses and Dead Lions succeed because Jackson Lamb is a guilty pleasure. He’s a misanthrope who delights in denigrating . . . well, everyone. Lamb’s an HR nightmare. But he knows what he’s doing. “Lamb had done both field and desk, and he knew which had you gasping awake at the slightest noise in the dark. But he’d yet to meet a suit who didn’t think themselves a samurai.”

So is Lamb chasing a ghost or is the threat real? Well, here’s another animal reference for you. A black swan is a “totally unexpected event with a big impact. But one that seems predictable afterwards, with the benefit of hindsight.” Does that answer your question?

It was a “yes” or “no” question, so not really. But I have one more. Why call the novel Dead Lions? Several reasons, I suspect. The most explicit one is “Dead Lions” purports to be an English party game for children. “You have to pretend to be dead. Lie still. Do nothing.” At the game’s end, all hell breaks loose. Goodness, those English folks sure know how to have fun.

Gladiola Overdrive, Chief Editor