SLOUGH HOUSE by Mick Herron
I’d read rave reviews about this series
and had to see for myself if the hype was true . . . Yep, it is.
The concept is that Britain’s premier spy agency, located in London’s Regent Park, has a holding zone for misfits in an out-of-the-way office called Slough House. Erased from “the Park” employee records, they spend their days trolling the internet for potential
national security threats.
(As an aside, my first office at the CIA had a similar outfit. Over-the-hill types who weren’t yet eligible to retire yet not very productive got parked in the “Regional Analysis Center.” Of course, the rest of us called it the “Redskins Analysis Center” due to all the football talk. But I
digress.)
After a somewhat slow start and (my) confusion as to the identity of the first murder victim, it seems that someone is killing members of Slough House, using a pre-digital-era list of its denizens.
Bottom line, this means those new to Slough House are safe, but those who have been there for some time are in mortal danger.
Unbeknownst to Slough House, head of the Park accepted money from a consortium of businessmen in order to carry out an assassination
attack in retaliation for a Russian biological attack on British soil. It’s never spelled out but the reference is to the (real life) 2018 attempted assassination of defector Sergei Skripol when he and his daughter were poisoned by the Novichok nerve agent painted on their home’s doorknob.
Is it possible that Moscow is
counter-retaliating by targeting Slough House?
Led by the colorful and politically incorrect rogue Jackson Lamb, who barks insults worthy of a modern-day Shakespeare, it’s up to the failed spies of Slough House to save themselves from Russian killers.
It’s a dense read and a true game of thrones with a very memorable cast of well-defined characters. The plot twists and turns on itself, almost causing me to diagram the links between various players.
The
omniscient style is reminiscent of John Le Carré, although the way the British security agencies are distilled into the Park reminds me of Olen Steinhauer’s mysterious East European spy agency in his standalone novel The Bridge of Sighs.
Slough House is the latest in the series about the eponymous playpen for failed
spies but enough backstory is provided to make it a standalone, too. Slow Horses, a British euphemism for washed up spies, is first in this mesmerizing series.
Highly recommended.
