It’s more proof that, though there may be spy novels with sentences as impeccable as Herron’s, it’s unlikely there are spy novels that are also as funny.
“No one enters Slough House by the front door,” the novelist Mick Herron writes in Dead Lions, the second book in his series about an “administrative oubliette” for useless spies exiled by MI5, Britain’s domestic-intelligence agency. “Instead, via a shabby alleyway, its inmates let themselves into a grubby yard with mildewed walls, and through a door that requires a sharp kick most mornings, when damp or cold or heat have warped it.” The rest of Slough House isn’t much better: a nest of abandoned keyboards and empty pizza boxes strewn around by agents who would rather be anywhere else. On the top floor is the lair of the spymaster Jackson Lamb, stinking of “takeaway food, illicit cigarettes, day-old farts and stale beer.”
The reviews of the show’s newest season—which premiered late last month and is based on the third novel, Real Tigers—have been adulatory.
Luckily, the books are funny, or their vision would be unremittingly bleak. There is no justice in the world of Slough House: Bad people prosper and the good die young. (Even worse, the mediocre and cowardly—that is, the most relatable characters—also die young.)
The Hopeless Spies Who Exemplify Modern Britain
I said I was done with literary themed posts for a bit but this article by the esteemed Helen Lewis turned up Sunday. I guess it is a sign. I had a post about Slow Horses on the back burner for months and almost dumped it. Last spring, somehow*, I stumbled over the series and looked it up on the Hoopla digital library service here. They had the audio books so I listened to one and within a month had heard them all. I am not a spy novel guy but I was sucked in. I can’t outdo Helen’s description of the series and there is lots more online about it. It has been a huge success.
I haven’t seen the show but I have seen lots of clips on YouTube.
Another high-profile fan of the books is Mick Jagger who co-wrote the theme song. “I really enjoyed creating the theme track for Slow Horses with Daniel Pemberton,” Jagger writes on Instagram. “I’ve read a lot of the books and was familiar with some of the more dark and unsavoury characters and knew the direction I wanted to take it…hope you enjoy it!”
Gary Oldman had ‘free rein’ in spy thriller ‘Slow Horses’ — now back for Season 3
* I remember now. It circles back to this post about a Dune series. I saw Saskia Reeves as Lady Jessica in it and wondered about it since I had only seen her a few times. I saw she was in Slow Horses which I never heard of. Oldman was in it and I know zip about him. The consensus was he was a superb actor. I started digging into that and on and on it goes.
The Subversive Worldview of Slow Horses Jackson Lamb’s island of misfit spies is the best place on television. By Sophie Gilbert