Spook street

British spy shenanigans in the 21st century! It's simple-minded to say that Mick Herron is the next John Le Carré, although Herron certainly has the writing chops to stand in the same crowd as Le Carré.

But Herron's worldview, while it is bleakly realistic at times, is much more, well, loving and open. Unlike Le Carré, his women characters are full-fledged human beings on a par with his male characters. And I often think of Ray Davies' studies of small, "forgotten" lives when I read Herron.

Herron won me over when I realized that with "Slow Horses" he was neatly upending the Muslim terrorist trope. He sees the evils of Western empire pretty clearly and doesn't pull punches with regard to the havoc wreaked by the UK and US all over the world.

One sizable grub in the ointment, for which the series is losing two stars from me: Herron often has one of his main characters, Jackson Lamb, utter casually racist asides. The Asian (and probably autistic) character Raymond Ho is a frequent target of these, but he's not alone. The comments are played off as "wow, that Lamb is really trying to make himself disliked," kind of like Lamb's frequent farting. But Lamb happens to be written as a Dr. House character, kind of a dislikable but good-hearted wizard. So it's really easy to dismiss the comments. But there's no need for these racist comments in ANY modern fiction, unless you're writing a Nazi character who gets punched later. Wish that Herron were on social media :-/ Reader beware.