310 pages
English language
Published Sept. 5, 2017
"What happens when an old spook starts to lose his mind? Do the Services have a retirement home for people who know too many secrets but don't remember they're secrets? Or does someone come to take care of the senile spy for good? These are the questions River Cartwright must ask himself as his grandfather--David Cartwright, a Cold War-era operative--starts to forget to wear pants, and starts believing everyone in his life is someone sent by Services to watch him. However, River has other things to worry about. A bomb goes off in the middle of a flash mob performance in a busy shopping center and kills forty innocent civilians. The agents of Slough House have to figure out who is behind this act of terror before the situation escalates"--
After thoroughly enjoying Slow Horses on Apple TV+, I read the book volumes 1 through 3 in Japanese. There is no Japanese translation from volume 4, so I started reading the original version.
I just love this series! It's very funny and witty at times, then sad and dark at other times. I had never imagined the old spy suffered dementia....
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 …
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.
A very interesting angle - and one I had not come across before. The usual mayhem and backstabbing presided over with a zen like mysticism of Lamb.
Occasionally I stumble on an author whose writing improves from book to book. The last I remember was Terry Pratchett, until dementia eroded his powers. Working in an entirely different genre, Mick Herron is the most recent. The characters, the dialogue, the plot
