Tag Archives: Spy

Slow Horses: Immorality Play

Mick Herron’s Slow Horses is a feat. It’s an authentic spy thriller with a laugh track. Written in the third person, the voice is conversational, appealing, and mildly sarcastic. Here’s an example. “Most of us hold that some things only happen to other people. Many of us hold that one such thing is death.” But it takes more than an engaging tone to create a fast-paced, suspenseful story. Herron succeeds there too.

It’s the 2000s and Britain is a mess. Whoa, Gladiola, I assumed this book is fiction. Is Slow Horses nonfiction? I don’t know. Britain certainly is a mess, but I found the book in the fiction section of Book No Further – though, I agree, the story does have that “ripped from the headlines” feel. May I continue with my review? Of course, my apologies. I’m a hairy ass covered with boils.

A group of extreme British nationalists have kidnapped a young man. He might be Pakistani, but he’s not. He was born in Britain. He does, however, have an uncle who lives in Pakistan. That’s good enough for the kidnappers. They’re going to chop his head off in 48 hours. On the internet. MI5 is on the job. Will our friend keep his head? Odds are . . . no. Because the slow horses have inserted themselves.

Who are the slow horses? They’re MI5 agents who have been relegated to Sough House, because they’re incompetent, unlucky, alcoholic, and/or obnoxious like mustard gas. They’re really bored and desperate to prove they don’t belong in Slough House – though they do.

Jackson Lamb is in charge of Slough House. And, with Lamb, Herron has created one of the great characters in the genre. He’s a foul-smelling, misanthropic burnout from when the Cold War was hot. “When he was in the field, he had more to worry about than his expenses. Things like being caught, tortured and shot. He survived.” Don’t trifle with him.

Throughout the story, he spars with Diane Taverner (Lady Di). She’s formidable in her own right. “The Service has a long and honorable tradition of women dying behind enemy lines, but was less enthusiastic about placing them behind important desks.” Lady Di sits behind a very important desk. Don’t trifle with her either. She and Lamb are at each other’s throats, and it’s delightful to watch. But will their rivalry doom our soon to be headless friend?

Everyone says Herron is John le Carre’s successor, so there’s no need to mention that here. And Everyone is stupid. As great as le Carre was, he never could have written a spy thriller like this. His stories were morality plays, and humor was a cardinal sin. Herron doesn’t get riled up about human nature and its sorry state. In fact, the subject seems to make him laugh. Me too.

Gladiola Overdrive, Chief Editor

Christopher Marlowe in a Bodice

So, Gladiola, I’m looking for a historical fiction-spy-romance novel. And it needs to be a bodice ripper. But the bodices must be worn by men. They should also be ripped off by men. Can you recommend something?

Wow! That’s really specific. But fortunately I just finished reading Allison Epstein’s A Tip for the Hangman, and it has everything you want in the historical fiction-spy-romance-male/male bodice ripper genre. However, the narrative does drag at times, especially at the end.

The story opens in October 1585, and Kit (Christopher Marlowe) is at Cambridge University. He believes the other students think he doesn’t belong there. They do. He comes from a poor family in Canterbury where his father is a first-rate alcoholic and third-rate cobbler.

Though he’s a brilliant student, he’s an outsider – all the more so because he’s homosexual. Fortunately his classmate and best friend, Tom, is too. Their love is the only stable thing in Kit’s life. From the beginning Tom knows Kit is a brilliant poet. Eventually Tom realizes this means Kit is also a brilliant liar.

Kit’s moral flexibility comes to the attention of Sir Francis Walsingham, Queen Elizabeth’s spymaster. He desperately needs spies, because Papists across England and Europe are conspiring to depose the queen and replace her with a Catholic monarch. Their leading candidate is Elizabeth’s cousin, Mary (Queen of Scots). That must be awkward around the holidays.

Soon Kit is inside Mary’s household sending vital information to Walsingham, but Kit’s success comes with a cost. “Perhaps he understood, now, what it was for actions to have consequences. None of Walsingham’s agents understood that from the beginning – if they did, they would never sign on. But they all realized, sooner or later, what victory felt like. Hazy and sour, like a half-remembered dream.”

Walsingham gives Kit more assignments, but meanwhile Kit has become the most successful playwright in London. His plays scandalize the censors and the church. He is clearly an atheist, and his relationship with Tom is concerning. Could he be susceptible to blackmail? Could he be a traitor? As long as Walsingham is alive, Kit is protected. Walsingham dies. Kit better watch his back.

The novel is mostly true to the scant historical record on Marlowe. However, the large holes in the record allow Ms. Epstein to conjure an intriguing tale that works best when focused on Papist conspiracies and Kit’s efforts to expose them. And while the love between Kit and Tom is convincingly depicted, it also drifts into melodrama. Overall, however, A Tip for the Hangman is an entertaining read.

Gladiola Overdrive, Chief Editor

When Pretending to be Something, Don’t be a Nazi

In the introduction to his sublime Mother Night, Kurt Vonnegut famously warns “We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be.” Take Howard W. Campbell, Jr., the novel’s captivating narrator. He wasn’t careful at all, and now he’s sitting in an Israeli jail waiting to be tried for war crimes. Hi ho.

Thirty years earlier during the 1930s, Campbell was an American playwright of “modest reputation” living in Germany. He was married to a beautiful German actress, and they were a “nation of two.” What could possibly go wrong? A brushfire called World War II.

Immediately before the war started, Campbell was recruited by an American agent to be a spy. Campbell agreed because “I would have an opportunity for some pretty grand acting. I would fool everyone with my brilliant interpretation of a Nazi, inside and out.” He succeeded outrageously and for all the world to hear. He became a radio broadcaster and propagandist for the Nazis; however, during his broadcasts he sent coded messages to the Americans to help the Allies win the war. But to the world, he is a “shrewd and loathsome anti-Semite.” His outward support for Nazism ultimately lands him in that Israeli jail.

Mother Night is Campbell’s confession to the Israelis. He gives it voluntarily and eagerly. But he’s not interested in exoneration. He readily admits to being a “man who served evil too openly and good too secretly, the crime of his times.” Is this irony or just a statement of fact? Does it matter?

Because here’s the thing. Campbell was a spy for the good guys in that war, but he still helped the Nazis. His father-in-law, early in the war, had suspected Campbell of being a spy. He hoped Campbell would be shot as a traitor. By the war’s end, he no longer cared if Campbell was a spy or not. “Because you could never have served the enemy as well as you served us . . . I realized that almost all the ideas I hold now, that make me unashamed of anything I may have felt or done as a Nazi, came not from Hitler, not from Goebbels, not from Himmler – but from you . . . You alone kept me from concluding that Germany had gone insane.” That’s quite an indictment. And it is one of the passages that makes this book brilliant. Throughout the novel, it is clear that Campbell’s vicious propaganda assisted the Nazis in their brutality. It is not clear at all how he helped the Allies. Given the severe consequences of all his lies, does being an American spy save him from condemnation?

Mother Night is obsessed with lies and their consequences. And though it was written more than 60 years ago, it is as relevant now as ever. Chew on this if you doubt me: “I had hoped, as a broadcaster, to be merely ludicrous, but this is a hard world to be ludicrous in, with so many human beings so reluctant to laugh, so incapable of thought, so eager to believe and snarl and hate.”

Gladiola Overdrive, Chief Editor