Slow Horses Jackson Lamb Thriller 1
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Slough House is a dumping ground for British intelligence agents who've screwed up a case - say by leaving a secret file on a train, or blowing a surveillance. River Carter, one such "slow horse," is bitter about his failure and about his tedious assignment transcribing cell phone conversations. When a young man is abducted and his kidnappers threaten to broadcast his beheading live on the Internet, River sees an opportunity to redeem himself. But is the victim who he first appears to be? And what is the kidnapper's connection with a disgraced journalist? As the clock ticks on the execution, River find that everyone has his own agenda.
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Mick Herron's Slow Horses is that rarest of things - a well-written, gripping modern spy thriller. Too many books are trumpeted as the new Len Deighton or John le Carré when in fact they fall well short of the mark. Herron's novel, though, has a claim to join the best of the best.
Coming nearer to Deighton than anyone else, Slow Horses introduces us to the denizens of Slough House (Slough House - Slow Horse - Slow Horses, see?) where those of the secret service who have screwed up, be it through drink, drugs or mission failure, find themselves under the unsympathetic eyes of Jackson Lamb, veteran spook, slob and no-nonsense bastard. Assigned to do grunt work (scouring files, cataloguing, transcribing) because they can't be trusted with anything else these are the agents the Service hopes will just quit. This is the mundane, ordinary world of the everyday spy. The slog through paperwork and computer files in search of....well, sometimes nothing at all.
But when a young Asian student is kidnapped by a far-right group who threaten to cut off his head live on the web, life suddenly becomes interesting for the Slow Horses as they find themselves in the frame for running an illegal black op. Except Jackson Lamb is far too wily to be the fall guy and so begins a game of cross and double cross while the timer counts down to the execution. Herron even finds space to include a spot on parody of a well known former Mayor of London and his over-grown faux-schoolboy buffoonery, as he seeks to protect himself from being exposed by a washed-up journalist of having links to far-right organisations like the one about to commit murder.
Herron writes with a economy and style and, once he's established the cast of characters, the story motors on to it's conclusion, all the while ramping up the tension. There is cliff-hanger after cliff-hanger and several times he pulls the rug from under the reader so that what you thought had happened isn't quite what did. The Slow Horses of the title, once they have to work as a proper team instead of a collection of bitter individuals, prove themselves more than a match for the bright sparks of Regent's Park (home of the SIS) and while comeuppances aren't quite what one expects, Herron sets up things quite nicely for an ongoing series.
For once the praise is well-deserved and I look forward to reading the other Jackson Lamb books. Highly recommended for all fans of spy fiction.