Books are like buses – you wait for a good one and suddenly three come along at once. The final in my ‘It’s really good read it now trilogy’ is Slow Horses by Mick Herron.
Slow Horses – the blurb
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 net. And whatever the instructions of the Service, the slow horses aren’t going to just sit quiet and watch . .
Slow Burn
When so many people recommend a book you have to listen and this was the case with Slow Horses. It’s a spy book but not like one you’ve read before. A misfit bunch of spook rejects slowly rot at a place as dejected as its inhabitants – Slough House. But once a spook always a spook as the reader is about to find out. Jackson Lamb and his team take a bit of time to bed in. I was struggling with character placement at around page 50 but the writing and the concept kept me ticking over until the slow burning plot came into play.
There is true insight into the life of a spook (well it felt realistic to me) and has a whole host of characters/underdogs to route for. As well as people you truly want kicked to the kerb! There are many subplots but they are worth the page space and it is really, really witty. It would make a brilliant television series (there are rumblings of one being made) but even more excitingly there is a WHOLE series of books that I for one will be devouring immediately.
Dead Lions?
I’m so pleased I have met Jackson Lamb and his team and can’t wait to see how they continue in Dead Lion, book two in the Slough House series. If you were wondering what the other two really good reads were that I was referring to at the start, check out the reviews of We Begin At The End and Three Hours that are on the blog now.
