Joe Country

Mick Herron's sixth Slough House novel opens with an exploding barn and two dead bodies. We then spend the rest of this excellent thriller finding out just who those bodies belonged to.

Nothing much has changed at Slough House. Jackson Lamb's not-so-merry band of secret service screw-ups are still doing mind-numbingly tedious tasks while clinging on to an ever-diminishing hope of redemption and a return to the bright lights of Regent's Park. But things take a turn when long dead Slow Horse Min Harper's ex-wife calls Louisa Guy and ask for help finding her son, Lucas. With the country beginning to be buried under a blanket of snow, Louisa heads off into the wilds of Wales (well, Pembrokeshire) to search for him.

But as ever, things are far more complicated than a missing person's case. For Lucas has seen something he shouldn't have involving the rich and powerful and his attempts at blackmail have now set an assassination squad on his tail. Not only that, its led by Frank Harkness, slow horse River Cartwright's ex-CIA mercenary-for-hire father. Meanwhile new slow horse Lech Wicinski has flagged a name he shouldn't have and brought down a whole world of hurt upon himself.

And over all this sits Jackson Lamb like a crumpled, malevolent stain. But there's one thing that still holds true - you don't mess with Lamb's joes. So when River Cartwright, JK Coe and Shirley Dander set off after Louisa and things take their usual Slow Horse turn, there are consequences. Just maybe not the kind they were expecting....

Meanwhile new head of the Service, Diana Taverner, is frustrated by the oversight committee but former Home Secretary (and Herron's pitch perfect caricature of Boris Johnson) Peter Judd pitches a subversive idea for the future of MI5 that sets her thinking. That Judd is also somehow somehow involved in what went on in Wales also muddies the waters.

Herron Slough House books are the finest modern-day espionage thrillers out there. The mix of politics, spycraft and flat out thriller are second to none. Highly recommended.

Oh, Mick, you were doing so well in making each entry in this series a tensely-plotted and craftily-resolved story, with maybe a hint about what might be raised in the next novel. This alone provided an experience that had me coming back for more. This book, however, while containing as much tension and as many twists and turns, raised so many concerns, not enough of which were resolved, and those that were, were not very satisfactorily done. The big showdown with River and his father is nothing more than a cliffside scuffle, and a few pages at the end suggest Harkness's multi-book pain-in-the-assery is now dealt with, no justice or face-to-face closure for his son?! Or Harkness is not dead and this a bullshit misdirect. 🙄 Coe's literal worst nightmare is, for all the reader can tell, how he spent his last moments? Emma, the only person who after wrongfully being pushed out of a promising career track, tells Taverner to fuck off, rather than go Slough House, and helping out when it wasn't her job anymore, ends up dead?! The entire book is one long torturous descent of an innocent man into the depths of isolation and depression at the whims of bad actors and at the end he's scarred and his foes' fates are glossed over or pending? It's obvious it's set up for the next novel, which hopefully will be that much more explosive as a result, but 6 books into a series is pretty deep to start bringing out the type of cliffhanger-adjacent endings which I loathe. 🙎🏼‍♂️ Oh, and if it's possible, even though it's standard that people die and are betrayed in each book, I think things actually got darker than usual. 😕 Either the next book will redeem the series, or it will be the last one I read. 😡

⚠️alcoholism, fatphobia, self harm