Slow Horses

Slough House #1

by Mick Herron

Alternate cover edition of ASIN B00X61MZQC

Shortlisted for the CWA Ian Fleming Steel Dagger Award

Slough House is a dumping ground for members of the intelligence service who've screwed up: left a service file on a train, say, blown a surveillance, or become drunkenly unreliable. They're the service's poor relations - the slow horses - and most bitter among them is River Cartwright, whose days are spent transcribing mobile phone conversations.

But when a young man is abducted, and his kidnappers threaten to behead him live on the internet, River sees an opportunity to redeem himself. But is the victim who he first appears to be? And what's the kidnappers' connection with a disgraced journalist? As the clock ticks on the execution, River finds that everyone involved has their own agenda . . .

Genres: Fiction, Thriller, Mystery, Espionage, Audiobook, Crime, Mystery Thriller

336 pages, ebook

First published June 1, 2010

About the author

Mick Herron was born in Newcastle and has a degree in English from Balliol College, Oxford. He is the author of nine books in the Slough House series as well as a mystery series set in Oxford featuring Sarah Tucker and/or P.I. Zoë Boehm. He now lives in Oxford and works in London.

Reviews

[Adina ( not enough time ) · Rating 5 out of 5]

Oops, I forgot to review this one but I am trying to fix my mistake now.

I’ve had this novel on my Kindle for a while but I only decided to finally read it when I heard about the TV series.

On basic terms, Slow Horses is a novel packed with humour and intrigue about a bunch of MI5 agents who all f**ed-up one way or another. The once-great Jackson Lamb shepherds all of them in a division nicknamed The Slough House. Full of self-pity and anger, nobody likes any of their other colleagues and spend their office hours hating every minute of their dull existence. River Cartwright, might or might not have made a small mistake which caused a major disruption in a train station during a promotion exercise. Bitter, he receives a mundane and foul errand to help the Main office, aka to search the trash of a failed reporter. Dissatisfied with the way his career has slumped, he tries to find out more about the reasons he was given the job and gets himself and his colleagues in a nice mess. At the same time, a young Pakistani boy is kidnapped and threatened with public decapitation. Might those two events be connected? Will Slough House agents of disaster finally do something right?

I thought the novel had the perfect balance of good writing, background information, well rounded characters, action, humour and spying. After the 1st half, I was treated with a healthy amount of crossings, double-crossings, twists and turns at every step. Excellent stuff for a 1st volume in a series.

[Phrynne · Rating 5 out of 5]

Well I have to give this book five stars because I read it in one day when I should have been doing other things, and now I really want to move straight into book 2

Not just another mystery/thriller, Slow Horses is totally original in style and content. The main characters are apparently a bunch of losers and misfits which made it all the more exciting when they tried to pull together and achieve something. And of course from the reader's perspective it was anyone's guess if and when they were ever going to win.

River Cartwright (yes, there were lots of jokes about his first name) managed to be a very appealing lead character and I hope he features in subsequent books. His boss, Jackson Lamb, is also more than meets the eye and is well versed in coming out on top regardless of events around him.

This book is clever, funny, well paced and always interesting. I believe I have found myself another good series!

[Orsodimondo · Rating 5 out of 5]

LA SPIA PERFETTA


La serie su Apple TV giunta alla terza stagione.

Visto che le spie di serie A sono chiamate purosangue, quelle di serie B, protagoniste di questo romanzo, più che i brocchi saranno i ronzini.
E ronzini non si nasce, si diventa. Dopo i momenti carichi di adrenalina prima della corsa; dopo essersi mescolati ai purosangue, averli annusati, strusciati, ammirati; dopo essere scesi in pista, ma senza mai arrivare al traguardo perché il galoppo s’è interrotto prima della linea di fondo per diventare uno scomposto trotto. Ora i ronzini rimangono nella stalla, nella parte più buia, sporca e puzzolente: i purosangue sono un ricordo rinnovato dalla vista e dall’odore, ma tra i campioni e i brocchi non c’è più nulla da spartire.


Le spie di serie A.

Herron è bravissimo a descrivere la discesa delle spie dalla serie A in quella di scarto: la noia, il grigiore, la desolazione, il cinismo, l’invidia, la frustrazione. L’attesa?
Sì, forse, probabilmente anche quella.
Se non altro la speranza che viene spinta sempre più a fondo e rinchiusa nella parte di cuore meno pulsante.
E il suo racconto scorre su binari alimentati da inesauribile ironia di marca british.


Gary Oldman comanda i brocchi.

Qualcosa però lascia credere che più che aver sbagliato, commesso un errore, i ronzini brocchi siano stati dati in pasto ai lupi, paghino per sbagli altrui, magari del sistema. Siano vittime. In attesa di redenzione. Forse falliti, più probabilmente fregati, senz’altro sconfitti.

Qui si narra della Casa nella Palude, la sede dei servizi segreti di scarto: ci lavorano agenti e spie che presumibilmente hanno commesso un errore. Spesso non è stato il loro, gli è stata scaricata una colpa che non hanno commesso. Altrettanto spesso sono scelte come vittime sacrificabili.
Sono relegati in questo spazio anonimo, regno del grigio, della polvere, dell’inutilità, della monotonia, a svolgere mansioni inutili e oziose, nell’attesa che si decidano a licenziarsi. Così si risparmia anche sulla buonuscita e si evitano cause di lavoro.
Sono “proprietà” di cui l’MI5 si liberebbe volentieri come se fossero vecchi schedari non più utili in epoca digitale.


Kristin Scott-Thomas è la numero due dell’MI5 facente funzioni di numero uno.

Il Daily Telegraph, che non sarà il quotidiano più autorevole del Regno Unito, almeno tra quelli ‘politici’, ma è di gran lunga il più venduto, se non altro fino a qualche anno fa (tipo tre volte più del Guardian) ha inserito questo romanzo tra le venti migliori spy story di sempre.
Io non sono bravo a stilare classifiche di questo tipo: ma posso dire senza incertezza che è una delle migliori che abbia mai letto, e che era un sacco di tempo non ne leggevo una così buona. Almeno dai tempi dei migliori Le Carré.
Romanzo eccellente e anche molto divertente, con la giusta dose di ingredienti: personaggi sfaccettati quanto basta, un po’ di personalità e psicologie, azione ma senza eccesso, colpi di scena ma senza grancassa. Mick Herron racconta una storia che stupisce, anche sorprende, all’insegna del doppio, e triplo, gioco: eppure ogni momento e passaggio e dettaglio è credibile e verosimile.
Tra l’altro, di estrema attualità, nonostante la dozzina d’anni che il libro ha alle spalle. Anche se, forse, da qualche settimana l’orso russo è ritornato a essere il nemico pubblico numero uno, dopo aver lasciato campo al mondo arabo per un paio di decenni.
E il politico di turno sembra il modello del nostrano leader leghista. Sigh…


Con mio massimo dispiacere Oldman ha annunciato che questa serie sarà il suo ultimo lavoro da attore, ha intenzione di ritirarsi dalle scene.

[PattyMacDotComma · Rating 5 out of 5]

5★
“Always, in railway stations, there was this sense of pent-up movement. A crowd was an explosion waiting to happen. People were fragments. They just didn’t know it yet.”

This is not only spooks and spies and intrigue (and it definitely is all that), it is very funny and entertaining! It’s also a wonderful combination of old school sleuthing and networking and never burning bridges (well, not completely) and brave-new-world technology like CCTV mobile (cell) phones and database hacking. All wrapped up in some delicious writing like this.

“. . . the grey isn’t grey but black with the stuffing knocked out of it.”

There are lots of characters, and I’ll admit I had to backtrack a few times to remember who Hobbs and Hobden and Ho were, but I got the hang of it soon enough. Ho is the computer geek of the slow horses.

“Ho was usually first in, often last out, and how he spent the hours between was a mystery to River. Though the cola cans and pizza boxes surrounding his desk suggested he was building a fort.”

And there did need to be a bunch of characters since some were stationed in the real headquarters, Regent Park, and our “heroes” are the spies who’ve been relegated to a pre-retirement holding pattern in Slough House. Slough rhymes with cow in British English (or with bough as in the bough that will break in the rock-a-bye-baby lullaby, but I digress). Close enough to house to make Slow Horse a kind of rhyming slang nickname that is their “department”. (Americans will have to make a mental adjustment not to hear slough as sloo. But I digress again.)

Pre-retirement is what the government intends this place to be — a job so boring and demoralising that people will retire, saving the embarrassment of being sacked. Sometimes it works that way, sometimes not. So far, nobody’s ever been promoted back up the ranks, though. They are located in a less-than-desirable area in an old building.

“The front door, as stated, lurks in a recess. Its ancient black paintwork is spattered with roadsplash, and the shallow pane of glass above betrays no light within. An empty milk bottle has stood in its shadow so long, city lichen has bonded it to the pavement.”

Got it? If you’re a slow horse, this is your lot. There are many reasons the men and women there have been demoted, and we learn early that River Cartwright (so named by his rebellious mother) was saved from being sacked outright because of the OB, or the Old Bastard, as River fondly refers to his mother’s father, who raised him and in whose footsteps he's chosen to follow.

River is still close to his grandfather, who was a spook of some renown, and it’s his reputation that stands between River and the door.

“Without this connection, River wouldn’t have been a slow horse, he’d have been melted down for glue.”

The boss of all of these losers is Jackson Lamb, and there is no love lost between Lamb and any of his underlings.

“Lamb’s laugh wasn’t a genuine surrender to amusement; more of a temporary derangement. Not a laugh you’d want to hear from anyone holding a stick.”

During a meeting, River contemplates what he’d really like to do.

“River had measured the distance between Lamb’s chair and the window. That blind wasn’t going to offer resistance. If River got the leverage right, Lamb would be a pizza-shaped stain on the pavement instead of drawing another breath;”

The main story is a kidnapping with a video circulating of a young man, head covered by a hood, being threatened with being beheaded in 48 hours. There is a disgraced journalist who seems to be involved in some dodgy activities, and the powers-that-be want to know what he’s doing. Some of the slow horses are surprisingly involved in an actual operation for once in a very long time, but things don’t work out all that well.

When the action heats up, and I start thinking to myself “How did she get in there? Where did the gun come from? How did they spot him?” Herron switches back to a previous scene which explains it. It’s done so easily and subtly that it doesn’t interrupt the action, but it makes it very satisfying to feel that there are no loose ends.

I loved it and have already started Dead Lions, #2 in the series, so many thanks to NetGalley for the copy from which I’ve quoted and to Hachette Australia.

Excuse me now while I go back to catch up with the slow horses and their old-word expertise and new-world tech! (I should add that this can be read as a stand-alone without needing to follow up.)

[Veronica ⭐️ · Rating 5 out of 5]

Slow Horses is Herron’s first book in the Slough House series, recently re-released in conjunction with the release of book 4, Spook Street.

After a mission gone terribly wrong River Cartwright is sent to Slough House, a place where tasks that didn’t matter were preformed by people that didn’t care. Where alongside a pre-digital overflow of paperwork, a post-useful crew of misfits can be stored and left to gather dust.

The story is told with a wry wit, in metaphors, retrospect and hypotheticals with plenty of laugh out loud moments and dark humour.

Slow Horses is an introduction to the main characters, the cast outs, at Slough House and their boss Jackson Lamb. The characterization is brilliant as Herron brings together a mismatched bunch of has-beens, loners that haven’t quite given up on the hope of one day returning to Regents Park.

Under all the character development is a great plot with backstabbing, twists, conspiracy theories, double crossing and buck passing. It’s compelling and edgy and pulls the story along with a rush of adrenaline as the pace quickens and events spiral out of control.

Wanting to read more of Jackson Lamb and his Slough House crew will be difficult to resist.

[Susan · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is the first book in the Slough House series. I have meant to try this series for a long while and, now that I have finally got around to starting it, I am sure I will be reading on. Author Mick Herron has taken the traditional spy story, given it a unique slant and, with many nods to classic spy novels, has created his own world; sly, darkly funny and utterly British.

Slough House is the dumping ground for members of the intelligence service who have messed up. Rather than sack them, those at Regents Park hope that doling out endless administrative tasks will lead the now defunct spooks, to take a job in security, or elsewhere. However, most of those side- lined to this department of, so-called, ‘Slow Horses,’ cannot envision a life outside of the service and dream of being of use again. The reasons why these former agents end up here vary; alcoholism, leaving top secret information on a train, or making a mistake in a training operation are some of the reasons given, although we learn these may not all be the agents fault.

River Cartwright certainly does not feel it was his fault that he has ended up at Slough House. His grandfather was a famous, much revered, ex spook, and so he dreams of another chance. It does seem that everyone at Slough House has pretty much given up though and the sarcastic, slovenly, Jackson Lamb, who presides over his small kingdom, seems to accept the status quo as much as anyone. However, when a young man is kidnapped off the street and appears on the internet, with those holding him threatening to behead him online, the Slow Horses become involved in the case. Can they throw off their mantle as failures and save the day?

This is clever, realistic, well plotted and funny. I liked the characters, the plot twists and the setting. I am a fan of spy novels and, if you like Le Carre or Eric Ambler, you might like to give this a try. It is a modern take on the spy novel; with a realistic setting, where politics and office politics combine and where Herron takes all our preconceptions and turns them on their head.

[Mimi · Rating 4 out of 5]

Gripping, funny, surprising. So many farts, though. Mr. Lamb should seriously get that checked out. Airbrushing your briefs every two sentences ain't normal, sir.

[Nataliya · Rating 4 out of 5]

I’m not even ashamed to admit that it was disheveled beer-bellied Gary Oldman in the eponymous TV series who got me to read this book.

“Their conversation had been focused at first (Jackson Lamb is a bastard), then becoming speculative (what makes Jackson Lamb such a bastard?) before drifting into the sentimental (wouldn't it be sweet if Jackson Lamb fell under a threshing machine?)”

Slough House is the place where “slow horses” (I suppose British pronunciation makes these sound similar) — the screw-ups of MI5 — go instead of being fired; a perpetual exile into a department of grunt work in return for no respect and plenty of mockery and disdain. No wonder everyone who’s stuck there is miserable, hates being there and each other, and hopes for the miracle of somehow returning to the ranks of non-screwups. Plus there’s the boss of Slough House, Jackson Lamb, made of food stains and rumpled clothes and beer gut and extremely bitter misanthropic disposition — and formidable skills under the rust of burnout. Plus there’s a fair bit of murkier unpleasant peer squabbles, corruption and skeletons in the closet in the coveted halls of MI5.

This place is a mess almost worse than Jackson Lamb’s stained overcoat. Almost.

”Lamb's been banished.
Where've they sent him? Somewhere awful?
Bad as it gets.
God, not Slough?
Might as well be.
Which, in a world of secrets and legends, was all it took to give a name to Jackson Lamb's new kingdom: a place of yellows and greys, where once all was black and white.”

We love rooting for underdogs, and this is a perfect case of such a setup, but devoid of viewing these underdogs through rose-colored glasses, not hiding their screwups and incompetencies and at times sheer unlikability — while also giving us vindication for viewing the shiny glossy suited-up “competent” bureaucracy with inherent and justified suspicion.

River Cartwright (the misfortune of an unusual first name compensated by the surname of a retired MI-5 bigwig grandfather) ends up in Slough House after a disproportionate punishment for a silly training exercise screwup, and of course there is a reason for it, and his desperate resentful meddling above his (newly reduced) pay grade, combined with Jackson Lamb’s talents that are not always hidden by his stained overcoat and the smell of deliberately rudely released intestinal gases, result in some disturbing revelations in a messed-up tangle of interrelated cases.

“Nothing sounded odd to Lamb; except, perhaps, that people had friends.”

Bottom line: don’t underestimate those you banish into the land of drudgery; they just may kick your exquisitely suited arse exactly where sun don’t shine when you’re too busy basking in your premature glory. London Rules, you jerks. Cover your ass all you want, Lamb has you in his sights.

3 and 3/4 stars.

[Woman Reading (is away exploring) · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.5 ☆

Half of the future is buried in the past.

It's a post-7/7 Britain. Headed by Ingrid Tearney, MI5 is geared toward preventing more domestic terrorist attacks. While Tearney is in D.C. on official business, Diana ("Lady Di" but never to her face) Taverner is in charge. Lady Di, of course, had long believed that she would be the first woman to lead MI5.

Suits and joes was an age-old opposition, but the game had changed in the last ten years, and intelligence was a business like any other.

Not all aspiring joes, however, can be 007 or George Smiley. Instead of letting those who can't do, teach, MI5's remedy is to consign their failures - their "slow horses" - to Slough House, a place with no career future, and wait for them to quit.

That was the true purpose of Slough House. It was a way of losing people without having to get rid of them, sidestepping legal hassle and tribunal threats.

In this purgatory, Jackson Lamb assigns his Slough House underlings tedious and mind-numbing tasks. Lamb's nine subordinates are a motley assortment of all ages culled from various departments throughout MI5. They're not a united group though all feel bitterness about their failed career dreams. In particular, River Cartwright is still convinced that a colleague/friend had sabotaged the assignment that had deposited him in Slough House for the past dreary eight months.

They'd been thrown together by fate and poor judgements, and had never operated as a team before.

Lamb didn't look any different, was still a soft fat rude bastard, still dressed like he'd been thrown through a charity shop window, but ... Lamb was a joe.

A sensational threat emerges after a young man with unusual connections is abducted. The kidnappers publicize their cause with the threat of an online decapitation in 48 hours and the nation is gripped. Is the young man's plight connected to a very rare op a Slough House member recently conducted? Will this be an opportunity for the slow horses to earn redemption? River refuses to sit on his hands and wait as the clock ticks down for the victim.

If Moscow rules meant watch your back, London rules meant cover your arse. Moscow rules had been written in the streets, but London rules were devised in the corridors of Westminster, and the short version read: someone always pays. Make sure it isn't you.

Many of my GR friends have given Slow Horses really favorable reviews and I'm joining the chorus. This is a spook story unlike most other espionage thrillers. The closest, yet imperfect, comparison I can make would be to The Looking Glass War, which John le Carré called a parody. Slow Horses does have farcical elements, which made the second half amusing. This is a clever, deeply cynical story with many interconnected components and some unexpected turns of events.

As the first in a series, Slow Horses was initially a bit clunky as Herron laid his foundation. The author also had the habit of oscillating between different scenarios within the same chapter, and I occasionally had to re-read parts just to make sure which character was actually speaking. But Slow Horses is a really good debut that feels original (which is a high compliment from me), and I now must request the rest of this series from my library.


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2nd Reading -

I'm currently indulging in a leisurely-paced buddy read of the entire Slough House series. It will be a challenge not to race ahead of the schedule because these books are addictive substances. Unsurprisingly, my original ratings of 4.5 stars survived the second reading.

Herron's concept has been delivered with a distinctive combination of parody, cynicism, and wit which oscillates between sly and whimsical. Slow Horses was a bit of a juggle in terms of keeping track of the large ensemble cast. But be patient because as the series progress, Herron will develop further his motley assortment of underdogs. And contemporary British politics provide Herron with plenty of satirical fodder.


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Listed in GR sequence, but not necessarily in chronological order:

#2 Dead Lions 4 ☆
#2.5 The List 4 ☆
#3 Real Tigers 4.5 ☆
#4 Spook Street 5 ☆
#5 London Rules 4.5 ☆
#5.5 Marylebone Drop 4 ☆
#6 Joe Country 5 ☆
#6.5 The Catch 4 ☆
#7 Slough House 4.5 ☆
#8 Bad Actors 4 ☆

[Liz · Rating 4 out of 5]

Story - 4 Stars, Audio Performance - 2 stars
This is the first in a series involving intelligence agents that have been banished to “Slough House” for their misdeeds. They are all bitter over being sent away from Regents Park and would do anything to get back into the real action.

It’s not a fast paced book. A third of the book is gone before anything big happens. It’s actually a pretty convoluted plot. When it finally takes off, it grabbed me. Who to trust? The nefarious plan is mind boggling. “Wars have been started for less.” There’s a lot of dark humor here. I had no clue how this was going to end. Could the slow horses actually pull it off?

I've often written about how some books do better as one to be read rather than listened to. This fits that bill. There are a lot of characters and we are given detailed background on each one. It was a lot to take in while listening. I also wasn’t enthralled with the narrator. At times, he was difficult to understand. And with a lot of similar names, that’s not a good thing. The other problem is the lack of a break between scene changes. I’m not sure how this was handled in the book, but here it’s a real distraction. Multiple times, I would be caught trying to figure out how a character changed locations instantaneously before realizing the scene had changed and it was about a different character.

So, at the end of the day, I’ll continue with this series but will try reading the next one instead.

[Carolyn · Rating 5 out of 5]

I'm so glad I finally got around to reading the opening novel of this series. Friends kept telling me how good it was and boy were they right!

I loved the writing - wry and sharp, often darkly humorous and deprecating of the failed spies from MI5 who end up at the bottom of the heap, the so-called 'slow horses' working at London's Slough House. They've all done something irrecoverable and cringe-worthy, from leaving classified information on a train to spectacularly failing a terrorist training exercise as River Cartwright had, one which would have resulted in hundreds dead and millions of pounds in damages had it been real.

“That was the true purpose of Slough House. It was a way of losing people without having to get rid of them, sidestepping legal hassle and tribunal threats.”

Ruling over all the misfits at Slough House, is Jackson Lamb. No one knows what Lamb did to end up at Slough House all those years ago. An ex field agent during the cold war, he's described as fat, lazy, unwashed with stained, greasy clothing but able to move rapidly with stealth when required. He also knows a lot of secrets and how to manipulate people.

Once condemned to work at Slough House there was no going back, the hope of MI5 being that agents would get bored to death of dead end paper shuffling and leave of their own accord. But some still hoped to redeem themselves and stayed on looking for that miracle opportunity. River Cartwright is one such hopeful who has his grandfather's spectacular cold war record in the service to thank for not being thrown out after his training debacle. When a young Pakastani student is taken captive by a white supremacist group with threats to behead him, River thinks there is a connection with a journalist they have had under surveillance. What River and the rest of the slow horses doesn't realise is the extent of the games being played behind their back until they are thrown in at the deep end.

Full of twists and turns, with the devious second in command at MI5, Diana Taverner (nicknamed 'Lady Di') playing dangerous games and using the slow horses for her own purpose, the novel is a delight as the slow horses try to find the kidnapped man and Jackson Lamb wakens from his long sleep to show his true talents. I'm so glad to find this re-invention of the spy novel, previously done so well by LeCarre, Forsyth and Deighton and to see the baton passed to a worthy successor. Now, for the next book in the series!

[Bill Kupersmith · Rating 2 out of 5]

There are now seven books in this series and they get good reviews in publications that usually look with disdain on crime fiction. So I was glad to have Slow Horses, the first of the series, as our monthly read for the Kindle English Mystery Group. And for about the first two hundred pages, I was quite taken. Then the story disintegrated into a succession of started hares haring off in all directions in pursuit of a hare-brained scheme involving a young Asian wannabe stand-up comedian whose uncle is supposed to a senior officer in Pakistani intelligence. The central premise is a branch office of MI-5 called Slough House where incompetent officers who’ve blotted their copy books (I nearly wrote “f-bombed-up” but I’m old-fashioned), are exiled, supervised by Jackson Lamb, who is basically an Andy Dalziel knock-off pretending to be George Smiley, just as Slough House is le Carré’s Brixton. Here both senior positions are held by women (one of whom is referred to as ‘Lady Di’ which I would regard as blasphemy). In my lifetime of reading spy novels I’ve progressed through Ian Fleming to Len Deighton to le Carré. I’d say the apogee was representd by Tinker Tailor, since then le Carré degenerated into cynicism, Moscow Centre being replaced by Big Pharma and American Evangelical Christians. Here we get an incoherent plot, a minor character who is based on a Cabinet Secretary (sheepdog coiffeur and bicycle – no Latin though). The only attractive character spends most of this book in a coma and it’s unclear if she survives. My guess is she’ll be back, but I’ll not be. Just as le Carré had the Circus, Scalp-hunters and lamplighters, Herron has his own go at colourful nomenclature with Regent’s Park, the Dogs (really) and Achievers (they ‘get the job done’ – get it?). If you’re a certain kind of reader, you may like this series. I’m not.

[Berengaria · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.5 stars
NB: "Slough" is not said "slow". In British English, it rhymes with "wow" and in American it rhymes with "flew". The verb rhymes with "fluff". No form rhymes with "glow". Therefore, the name "Slough House" is not said "Slow House". C'mon people! *shakes head*.

If you're looking for a fast-paced, high action spy thriller -- this isn't it.

This is, in fact, not even a thriller.

It is a character-driven novel that just happens to be about some deadbeat spies MI5 is trying to shake off like a case of fleas. The main intent of the novel is NOT to tell the tale of how a crime was prevented, but to explore the relationships between this rag tag band of angry, confused, frustrated - but still loyal- spies who have somehow disgraced themselves and been sent packing.

This literary bend is probably the reason some readers found the beginning intro to the characters slow and boring -- they were expecting James Bond, not Jonathan Franzen. I personally loved the beginning (and the wrap-up chapter) as it hits all my bells for clever contemporary British fiction. 😍

Besides that, what impressed me most about this novel was:

One, the writing. Herron can construct descriptions/metaphors that had me applauding in awe and wishing I could make it look so easy. Many of his sentences and scenes were a real pleasure to read.

Two, the character of Jackson Lamb. I don't think I've encountered such a well-drawn, fully-rounded character in light years. Good ones, yes, but not on the realism level of Lamb.

The tip-off description of him as a hippo -- fat and awkward looking, but extremely dangerous when he wants to be - was captivating...and watching him unpack his inner death-hippo as the novel progressed was MORE than satisfying. Take that, Regent's Park! 🔪

In short, I enjoyed every last second of this novel and am surprised it took so long to appear in my local bookshop window!

[Rob · Rating 5 out of 5]

Book 1 in the Slough House series published 2015.

5 stars for something special.

After having read so many positive reviews of this book I was expecting an entertaining read but what I wasn’t expecting was to be totally gob smacked.
This takes the spy/spook genre and makes that world accessible and relatable.

The slow horses are failed MI5 spooks who, whilst they can’t be fired from the service they have become persona non grata to the powers that be. As a result they now find themselves in Slough House doing menial tasks day in and day out until they either retire or get so bored they leave of their own free will.

The slow horses are by any definition embittered, anti social misfits. The embitterment starts at the top and continues right down the ranks to the last and least of the slow horses. But for all that the head of the slow horses is nobodies fool and knows when a stink is rising in his direction.

This particular stink is emanating from a video that is being streamed world wide of a young Pakistani boy who is on a countdown to having his head cut off live on TV.
But for Jackson Lamb, the head of Slough House, there is nothing kosher about this particular stink. Someone is playing God and not doing it very well. The public want answers and MI5 has promised to find the answers and the boy. In the meantime there needs to be a scapegoat and you guessed it who better than the Slow Horses from Slough House.

This is totally engrossing, mesmerising stuff, watching these anti social misfits come together and work as a team will have cheering for the misfits.

Highly recommended addictive reading.

[Loonywoman · Rating 2 out of 5]

Far too self consciously clever for my liking. His style came across as over worked and contrived. The characters left me cold, I formed no relationship with any of them. But I can appreciate the complexity of the plot although, for me, the constant flitting between strands detracted from the flow. The fact that River followed his grandfather into intelligence and that they openly discussed other agents stretched credulity. All in all, not my cup of tea.

[Julie · Rating 4 out of 5]

Original comments in August, 2018 - I completed seven of nine discs and started the eighth before deciding to chuck in the towel. I just couldn't connect with the story or the characters, and didn't care to hold on to see how it all unraveled.

6/13/22 - I've read some great reviews from my Goodreads friends and I'm giving it another go. After all, I've loved other books in a similar vein and it should be right up my alley. Perhaps I was feeling jaded in August, 2018?

6/17/22 - Overall, I enjoyed it better second time around and plan to read further volumes in the series. I found that I had to remain alert and engaged to pick up on all the nuances and sometimes hidden meanings of Mick Herron's writing. Here are the quotes that either intrigued me or tickled my senses as I listened:

A descriptions of the goings on, or lack of them, at Slough House: "You get to frighten people if they lurk at the bus stop too long. You make sure nobody steals any paperclips. You hang around the coffee machine listening to the other screw-ups. And that. Is. It."

This is intriguing to me: "But previous lives never really disappear. The skins we slough we hang in wardrobes, emergency wear just in case."

I picked up on one literary reference, there may be others, and wondered if 'Great Expectations' is still taught in schools. It was required reading back in my day, which is in the late 1970s. I recognized the name 'Miss Havisham' immediately in this quote and wondered how many others would also make the connection and understanding the meaning:

“He had to delve for her surname: Catherine Standish. Havisham would have suited her better. River didn’t know about wedding gowns, but she might as well have walked round draped in cobweb.”

I enjoyed the dark humor: "Without this connection, River wouldn't have been a slow horse, he'd have been melted down for glue." And, “the hardened edges of batter and skin, and lumps of charcoaled chip […] suggested his local takeaway wasn’t the best.”

What a splendid description of the manifestation of fear: “Fear lives in the guts. That's where it makes its home. It moves in, shifts stuff around; empties a space for itself—it likes the echoes its wingbeats make. It likes the smell of its own farts.”

International spy retires? "making the jump from foreign holidays to tending the home fires."

Great visual: "A car appeared at the far end of the road, its headlights pinning them to their seats."

I love the reference to cups of tea: "If he can outplay her he can surely find more worthy enemies. So far this is idle fancy, something to fill the space between this cup of tea and the next."

Update: 21st October, 2024 - reading again - this time with Simon. I know he will love this.

Quotes that caught my ears this time around:

"River sat, his chair's leather as soft as a diary's binding."

Regarding Jackson Lamb's space - "it looked less like an office than a lair."

[Wulf Krueger · Rating 2 out of 5]

“Slow Horses” by Mick Herron was excessively true to its name - it’s a very slow, half-dead horse that gets beaten and bogged down by its own limping pace. And I considered myself in danger of dying from boredom.

The entire first quarter consists almost exclusively of introductions to the characters and their world. Until half the book was behind me, a person had been kidnapped and that was pretty much all. Lots of foreshadowing happens, e. g. “x is going to happen”, “y is going to happen”, etc. etc. and, yes, that’s usually technically true but also entirely irrelevant for the story and the entire novel.

Also annoying were the excessively long chapters - the aforementioned 25% of the book are only three chapters…

The pace very slightly picked up during the final third of this novel but it was way too late and by far not enough to keep my interest. It also didn’t help that I didn’t care about any of the characters at all.

Only once did I actually sympathise with our wanna-be hero River…

»River had a sudden image of darkened rooms all over the country, all over the world; heads bent over monitors, studying iPhones, watching nothing happening, slowly.«

… because I also felt like that when reading this novel!

Two stars out of five.


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[Brenda · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a pretty clever book. Slough House is an old derelict building. Its occupants are slow horses, spies who have screwed up in various ways and been demoted. They are essentially paper pushers doing mundane work. They are a motley crew who are not friends, very suspicious, always alert and aware, and bitter. When one of them is sent on a field op, albeit just to pick up a bag of trash outside a disgraced journalist's home, mental alarms begin going off. They are never let out in the field.

By my count, there are ten slow horses including the boss. Most of their downfalls are learned over the course of developing the characters. They may be screw-ups, but I liked most of them a lot. When an online video of an abducted young Pakistani man is discovered, the slow horses start questioning and discovering things. They can't help it; it's who they are. They are spooks and they want to be back in MI5.

The writing style was interesting and included quite a bit of dry humor and sarcasm. There were a few uniquely British references that I didn't get, but I don't believe that ruined my reading experience. In fact, I'm eager to see what happens with the slow horses in future books!

[Carol, She's so Novel ꧁꧂ · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wow

Some how that doesn't convey the right level of awe.

I'll try again.


Much better.

I don't read much in the way of espionage nowadays, so I'm assuming this was a wildly original premise.

Washed up British "Spooks" end up at Slough House (hence the nickname "Slow Horses") It is hoped that these has-beens will realise of their own accord that they will never go back to Regent Park & quietly leave. (Doesn't this sound like twentieth century public service? 😄)

But not River Cartwright. He has taken the fall for a really serious incident that wasn't his fault. His boss, the slovenly Jackson Lamb has already told River that if it wasn't for his family connections that River wouldn't be a slow horse,

"he'd have been melted down for glue."

With the kidnapping of a young man, River sees the chance to redeem himself.

Get ready for a rollercoaster!

And don't read when you are in the mood for light escapism as you as a reader have to be on your A game!

The dry, dark humour made me laugh. I know of other readers haven't liked the language but in the nadir of my working life I cleaned the woodwork block of my local high school. Listening to some of those kids' language used to make me feel like I was swimming through a sewer. This is nothing compared to that!

I made the mistake of reading the second in the series Dead Lions before this one. I'm going to have to at least skim this before going on to Real Tigers

I'm looking forward to it.

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[Rebecca Roanhorse]

Recommended by a fellow author for the voice and humor which is definitely has. But it also has incredible character work and a twisty plot and a particular writing style that I adored. Spies and thrillers are not my usual fare, but these aren't you usual spies, and this definitely isn't your usual thriller. Beyond the well-drawn characters and edge-of-your-seat plot, there's also some lovely prose at work here, too. Strongly recommend.

Note that there's also an Apple TV adaptation. I've only watched the first episode but dare I say the book is better? The zingers don't quite come through on screen with the same panache and, of course, you miss all those tiny-inhale-of-pleasure descriptions. The TV show also has a definite darkness to it that the books, while thematically heavy, managed to avoid.

[Kitty · Rating 1 out of 5]

Don't waist your time. The premise was good in theory but it failed in credibility. The plot was practically non existent. There is so much character development that by the time the author circles back to the character you've already forgotten who he or she was in the first place. The main character only shows up every 10 pages or so. I will give the author credit for dialogue but it's few and far between. SLOW HORSES failed to even leave the gate for me.

[Fiona Knight · Rating 4 out of 5]

Lamb's been banished.
Where've they sent him? Somewhere awful?
Bad as it gets.
God, not Slough?
Might as well be.
Which, in a world of secrets and legends, was all it took to give a name to Jackson Lamb's new kingdom: a place of yellows and greys, where once all was black and white.

I don't even like spy stories, but Slow Horses surprised me - though it might be argued it's almost a portal fantasy into a world almost exactly like our own, but with undercurrents. Regardless, I had a great time.

Surrounding a group of out-to-pasture-but-not-quite-fired MI5 agents, Slow Horses takes it's time in introducing the reader to the group; we're still learning about them as the central conceit slowly unfurls. There's a lot to take in, given that it's a first book that seems to be laying some impressive foundations worthy of holding a large series, but for the most part this didn't feel like a chore - it sped past.

Most of the characters aren't precisely what you'd call reliable, though they're certainly realistic, but none of the one's we're meant to come away liking are entirely irredeemable. Even the villains are less moustache-twirlers and more bureaucrats, though to write off their evil as banal would be to ignore the real world examples of exactly how much damage that particular brand of evil is capable of spreading around.

Mick Herron might change point of view slightly more often than I was comfortable keeping up with, but I do like the way he crafts a sentence. He's fond of a narrative bait-and-switch, too, by way of using the reader's preconceptions against them, but that absolutely delights me when it's done well, to be honest. And it was - he manages to pull it off four or five times, too, without making it tired or too easy to see coming. That properly impressed me.

So, yes, all round a really excellent time with this book. 4.5 stars, though I might end up coming back and rounding up if it sticks with me like I suspect it will.

[Manda Scott · Rating 5 out of 5]

So.... I listened to BBC Radio 4 Front Row last night, and there was Mick Herron, talking about his Slow Horses series and he mentioned Len Deighton who was one of my writing heroes in my youth... and the wonder of e-living is that I was able to download it on the Kindle and ... lose an evening. I know something of this standard is a year's hard writing and there's something sacrilegious about reading it in slightly under 6 hours, but Mick, if you're reading this and it's any consolation, I switched off the light about 3am.

and heck, but this is good. I thought Night Heron by Adam Brookes signalled the new Le Carré (because that's our benchmark, like it or not) and Night Heron is good - but this... this is outstanding. Truly, it has the feel of an industry insider, but one with a sharp, deep, compassionate - and utterly ruthless - view of the good and the bad of his profession. The washed-up has-beens of the Slow Horses of Slough House are humanised and given depth so that when they begin to shine it is not implausible, but a huge and glorious relief. I won't go through the plot again, others have done so - I will only say: start it some time before 8pm if you don't want to wake feeling as if you've been sandbagged. And read it with joy that there is still some truly great writing in the world.

[Antoinette · Rating 5 out of 5]

If you want to lose yourself in a worthy spy thriller, then this book is for you.

I have watched the series since it first started and have loved it, so decided to go back to the beginning and read it. I am so glad I did- I feel I got a better appreciation for all the characters, I got to know their back history in more detail than from the show.

Jackson Lamb is such a slob but I couldn’t help admiring his tenacity. He is the leader of the “slow horses”- MI5 agents who have been demoted to Slough House- a place for all the rejects. But these rejects still have a lot to offer, as they prove in this book. All the twists and turns were perfectly executed and totally believable.

Loved this book- Look forward to getting to the next one, ASAP.

I listened to this book on audio- Read by Gerard Doyle and he was excellent!

Published: 2010

[Linda · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5

Thanks to GR Friend Lisa for inspiring me to begin this series.

Slow Horses is great fun. It is a different spy thriller that focuses on agents who inhabit the British Secret Service's margins. These Operators either made a terrible mistake or were framed by higher-ups. Their punishment is assignment to Slough House, where they are given tedious and meaningless tasks in the hope that they will quit in frustration.

The head of the Slough House, Jackson Lamb, is a wisecracking outsider who reminds me of the cynical, hardboiled PIs of Hammett and Chandler.
He works to insert his motley crew into the operations of M15 at Regent Park. In this introductory novel, the focus is on the kidnapping of a 19-year-old Pakistani, the nephew of a high-ranking Pakistani official, by a group of right-wing British militants. The novel's numerous twists and turns and Herron's lively writing style make for an intriguing summer read.
Recommend

[Suz · Rating 4 out of 5]

Just what I need – another series! Seriously, though, this was good. Dark good. Gritty and complex, one needs a strong stomach in certain scenes, and I would advise those not interested reading about bad people doing bad things, and things of a gory nature to give this one a wide birth.

A group of misfits, many unlikeables – not all may I say, have landed in Slough House. These people have failed in one form or another, they only land there, in this dumping ground, for reasons no good. They’ve stuffed up operations, blown surveillance or just too drunk. They certainly form an interesting bunch of failed MI5 spies.

This is not always deserved, there is a lot of corruption and seedy happenings, those not afraid to stab colleagues in the back, and certainly many do not shy away from a bribe or to scratch one an other’s unsavoury backs. The one thing they all want though, is redemption. They are known as the slow horses.

Jackson Lamb runs this unruly bunch, he is gruff on the outside, he farts and smells and doesn’t give a toss, but I see there are certain members he cares for, he’s a smart man who must deal with an unscrupulous head of the MI5. River Cartwright gets the most airtime here, we see he too is very smart, he really doesn’t belong there, and is deeply dissatisfied with the task of the mundane administerial job of going through tedious mobile phone calls. He has a lovely relationship with his grandfather, who also was an agent. This is a very interesting factor which I would say will be a go a long way in this series, and I look forward to that part.

A gruesome beheading is threatened to be aired on the internet, the clock is ticking but we see how dirty most people are, and why they’ve been relegated to Slough House. Nothing is as it seems and this is dripping with blood, greed, corruption and evil. Lots and lots of death.

Are this group of misfits as washed up as they are meant to be? Is this elusive redemption possible? Everyone it seems ends up paying for everything, deserved or not.

I loved this on audio, read by Sean Barrett, who delivers the Harry Hole series with aplomb, the great thing about this one was the repetition of the phrase referring to the execution ‘we’re gonna cut your head off and show it on the internet’. This was said with such menace it was a good reminder why I love the audio format. This is not always possible as all narrators are not top notch.

A very intriguing and raw series starter, which I do look forward to getting my teeth into. It is smart writing; the reader assumes one thing and the assumption is often wrong. Never a sentence is wasted, there is much going on, the reader needs to have their wits about them and I am sure I missed much. The platform I listened to failed a lot, I will source it elsewhere as my flow was interrupted, I won’t allow this to happen in book number two. I can’t wait to read it.

[K.J. Charles]

John Le Carre meets Christopher Brookmyre. I didn't think I was going to like this because it starts off with unremitting shabby miserable bleakness as we set up the hopeless failures of Slough House and the rotten amoral secret service they belong to. But then the plot picks up, and the fun starts as the team pull themselves together. I am definitely going for more of these, massively enjoyable, also pretty tense as the author is not afraid to kill or betray his characters.

[Iain · Rating 5 out of 5]

The closest I've found to le Carre yet from the raft of modern spy novelists, with added action and pace and perhaps less of the deep character internalisation and subtlety of plot that made le Carre so good. In Jackson Lamb, Herron has created a fictional spy that ranks up there with George Smiley and James Bond. Can't wait to read more of the series.

[Brenda · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5★s

After River Cartwright made several wrong decisions - or someone laid the blame squarely on his shoulders - he was told to report at Slough House, the place all misfits, rogues, and unreliables were sent to lick their wounds while working at mundane tasks. The boredom was horrific; the anger at what had happened ate at River, day in and day out...

Jackson Lamb, boss of the slow horses (those same has-been spies from MI5) didn't seem to garner respect from any of the people under his command - few knew why he was chief of London's Slough House. Would he have a chance to show his true colours? Perhaps the abduction of a young student and the terrorists' threat of beheading could give him as well as River and the team a chance to redeem themselves.

Slow Horses by Mick Herron is the first in the Slough House series, and a more different and intriguing plot I haven't read in awhile. After an explosive start, it settled into a slow and plodding plot, with twists, conspiracy theories, blame cast on others and more. Slow Horses is definitely worth the read and I'm looking forward to book #2. Recommended.

[Algernon · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is how River Cartwright slipped off the fast track and joined the slow horses.

A modern spy thriller, dealing with the post 9/11 war on terror, that surprised me with the quality of the writing and the cleverness of its plot. The setting is London and the focus is the activity of the counter-intelligence domestic agency known as MI5.
River Cartwright is a young, promising recruit from a family with a long and distinguished history in the service. Some might say that he got his admission because of the fame of his grandfather, a veteran of the Cold War. But River has managed to screw up his bright future all on his own, when he allows a terrorist to blow up one of the main underground stations in London. The fact that it was only a graduation live exercise and that all the victims and destructions were fictional matters little to his supervisors. River Cartwright is exiled to Slough House, the British equivalent of Siberia, even if geographically it is still part of central London and its real name has nothing to do with the Slough suburb.

... its name alone having proved durable, born years ago, in a casual exchange between spooks:
‘Lamb’s been banished.’
‘Where’ve they sent him? Something awful?’
‘Bad as it gets.’
‘God, not Slough?’
‘Might as well be.’
Which, in a world of secrets and legends, was all it took to give a name to Jackson Lamb’s new kingdom: a place of yellow and greys, where once all was black and white.

Jackson Lamb is the name of River’s new boss, an overweight slob who rules over his stable of burned-out, bumbling and simply unlucky former spies. Nobody knows why Lamb has been exiled to Slough House. The real MI5 bosses dispatch there all the drudging, soul-draining and often plain useless surveillance tasks, like transcribing phone conversations or poring over immigration records to look for red flags. They hope that this thankless job will force the slow horses, as they are known, to resign, thus making the position available for someone more worthy.

River Cartwright is full of resentment, both towards his supervisors who set him up for failure in his opinion, and towards his new colleagues, who probably deserved to be put to pasture. He would grab at straws to feel he is still on active duty, even as his boss Lamb asks River to search through the garbage outside the house of a former investigative reporter. There must be something there, right?

>>><<<>>><<<

With this being a spy thriller, filled with double-crossings and betrayals and secret identities, it will probably be best to say as little as possible about the plot and the main actors, preserving thus the surprise of the readers. The only hint I feel about revealing right now is that the main plot is about the kidnapping of a young student from Leeds, of Pakistani origins. His abductors threaten to cut his throat in 48 hours, without making any demands for his release. It appears they are politically motivated, but are they truly? Or is this a botched sting operation from within the intelligence service?
The slow horses of Jackson Lamb suddenly find themselves in the thick of a covert operation, and the dead bodies start to pile up in a race against the clock.

If Moscow rules meant watch your back, London rules meant cover your arse. Moscow rules had been written on the streets, but London rules were devised in the corridors of Westminster, and the short version read: someone always pays. Make sure it isn’t you. Nobody knew better than Jackson Lamb. And nobody played it better than Di Taverner.

>>><<<>>><<<

This was my first book by Mick Herron, but I liked it enough to consider reading all the rest of the Slough House novels. I liked his presentation, in particular his very British delivery of black humour.