Mick Heron's Slow Horses
I've read two of the books in this British spy thriller series. Here is my review of the first one.
Slow Horses
Mick Herron opens this book with a raid to stop a suicide bomber at Kings Cross. River Cartwright (his mother was briefly a hippie)., the grandson of an MI5 veteran who rose in the ranks, messes up when he is tricked by Spider Webb an opportunistic colleague, angling for management without having to risk his life as a real spy. Luckily, it was only a training exercise. But Cartwright’s error earns him a transfer to Slough House, a seedy building housing a crew of misfits presided over by the overweight and over the hill Jackson Lamb.
Lamb’s nemesis is Diana Taverner who hold sway at the Second Desk IN Regent’s Park. She makes sure that the Slough House denizens are relegated to filing and pointless research. But she has also hatched a bizarre plot to place Alan Black as an agent provocateur in Albion, an English nationalist group. Black prods his dim charges into kidnapping a British Pakistani so that he can be beheaded on the internet. Of course the plan is to rescue Hassan before the ax falls, and perhaps earning some chits from the lad’s uncle , a candidate for director of the Pakistani ISI. A washed up right wing journalist and a high ranking Tory turd with designs on 10 Downing Set connections to the terrorists figure in the mix.
Naturally ,nothing goes according to plan. Herron navigates the plot twists with great skill and displays keen insight into the workings of the intelligence bureaucracy. While he kills off a couple of the characters , the odious Tory turd survives His prose is top notch and leavened with humor. For example he describes some internet sites as “free for all forums where argument spat like a boiling chip pan”.
It's an amazing performance for the first novel in a series. One wonders if Herron is like a guitarist who puts everything into his first solo and has nothing to offer thereafter.
Slow Horses
Mick Herron opens this book with a raid to stop a suicide bomber at Kings Cross. River Cartwright (his mother was briefly a hippie)., the grandson of an MI5 veteran who rose in the ranks, messes up when he is tricked by Spider Webb an opportunistic colleague, angling for management without having to risk his life as a real spy. Luckily, it was only a training exercise. But Cartwright’s error earns him a transfer to Slough House, a seedy building housing a crew of misfits presided over by the overweight and over the hill Jackson Lamb.
Lamb’s nemesis is Diana Taverner who hold sway at the Second Desk IN Regent’s Park. She makes sure that the Slough House denizens are relegated to filing and pointless research. But she has also hatched a bizarre plot to place Alan Black as an agent provocateur in Albion, an English nationalist group. Black prods his dim charges into kidnapping a British Pakistani so that he can be beheaded on the internet. Of course the plan is to rescue Hassan before the ax falls, and perhaps earning some chits from the lad’s uncle , a candidate for director of the Pakistani ISI. A washed up right wing journalist and a high ranking Tory turd with designs on 10 Downing Set connections to the terrorists figure in the mix.
Naturally ,nothing goes according to plan. Herron navigates the plot twists with great skill and displays keen insight into the workings of the intelligence bureaucracy. While he kills off a couple of the characters , the odious Tory turd survives His prose is top notch and leavened with humor. For example he describes some internet sites as “free for all forums where argument spat like a boiling chip pan”.
It's an amazing performance for the first novel in a series. One wonders if Herron is like a guitarist who puts everything into his first solo and has nothing to offer thereafter.
Comments
Post a Comment