Real Tigers

The third of Mick Herron's Jackson Lamb/Slough House thrillers is every bit as good as the previous two, if not better.

There's a new Home Secretary, Peter Judd (a brilliant caricature of Boris Johnson at his most self-serving) who wants to stamp his authority on the Secret Service by having a “tiger team” of private operatives steal the PM's file from Regents Park. Part of the plan involves the kidnap of Catherine Standish as she leaves Slough House, so inevitably Jackson Lamb gets involved once her absence becomes clear.

But there are ulterior motives aplenty and the tiger team become the Real Tigers of the title when the plan goes pear-shaped and their boss ends up smeared across a London road, in full view of Judd. The Tigers have their own agenda, one that won't sit well with current head of the Service, Ingrid Tearney.

Jackson's gang of misfit spy rejects, the so-called Slow Horses, find themselves at the centre of the action, because they are seen as expendable. While Lamb tracks down Standish, the rest find themselves on a heist mission at the Service's new underground data storage facility. Tearney's arch rival, Diana Taverner, must try and recover the situation, saving both her job and Judd's face. As usual, things do not go to plan.

Herron writes a brilliant thriller, full of sharp one-liners (Lamb is a superb creation) and bone-crunching action scenes, mixed with almost slapstick bumbling from the Slough House crew. He's not afraid to kill off (or at least severely damage) his characters. No-one is invincible. The denizens of Slough House all have their own psychological baggage (which is why they've ended up there) but all dream of redemption, of turning their careers around and making it back to Regent's Park. That you know they won't makes them all the more tragic and believable.

Some have called Herron the heir to LeCarré but, for me, he's closer in tone to Deighton, especially in the depiction of the daily drudgery of espionage that the Slow Horses have to contend with. Real Tigers is a great read, a real page turner and I hope Herron writes many more tales of Slough House.

Recommended.