The Slough House Series - Review by Keenan Powell

I’m binge-listening to the Slough House series by Mick Herron. It’s a smart, sardonic British spy series, like Tinker, Tailor if it had been written by Douglas Adams. Slough House refers to the derelict building that houses the disgraced MI5 team known as “Slow Horses,” agents MI5 want to get rid of but don’t want to fire lest it gives rise to thorny legal actions. As a writer, I’m fascinated with the author’s voice, his multi-layered characters, and the rich spy culture he has created.

Each of the Slow Horses has committed a sin proving he or she is unfit for the spy business resulting in banishment to Slough House. River Cartwright, the heart of the stories, was accused of making a critical mistake during a training exercise that crashed Victoria Station during rush hour, but he might have been set up by the man he thought was his best friend. Some of his teammates include Rodney Ho, an IT wizard who is so arrogant and clueless that his teammates fantasize about killing him; JK Coe, a psychologist with a wicked case of PTSD who listens to music all the time and pulls a knife on people who disturb him; and Shirley Dander, a short squat cocaine addict with anger management issues. 

The boss of the unit, a father figure, is Jackson Lamb, a disgusting and offensive man drinking and smoking himself to death as fast as he can who enjoys verbally abusing his staff. It is unknown what sin he committed to relegate him to Slough House. The mother of the unit, recovering alcoholic Catherine Standish, Lamb’s secretary and the only person who isn’t afraid of him provides a calming and restorative influence.

There are many characters, teammates, secondary characters, and antagonists, and there’s a reason for that: red shirts galore. The Slow Horses want nothing more than to go back to the “The Park” even though the overarching motive of those employed there are to climb over the dead bodies of their friends and superiors. Whereas MI5 at “the Park” first analyze every incident from a self-interested point-of-view, the Slow Horses act without consideration for their own safety or reputation. So as each Slow Horse tries to seek redemption, they are constantly challenged by their loyalty to their teammates and duty to their country.

The first book in the series was published in 2010, the plots of each are timely. Slow Horses (book #1) is centered around the terrorist kidnapping of a London youth with a televised beheading threatened if the money ransom is not delivered. In Dead Lions (#2), a former MI5 agent found mysteriously murdered leaves behind a cryptic clue referencing a Soviet bogeyman from the Cold War era. In Real Tigers (#3), Slow Horse “mom” Catherine Standish is kidnapped, the ransom demanded is intelligence buried in the bowels of The Park. There are currently six Slough House novels and two novellas in print and another to be published in 2021 and a TV series in development with Gary Oldman playing Jackson Lamb.

Most of the audios are narrated by Gerard Doyle, one of my favorite narrators. He also performs the Deborah Crombie books and Adrian McKinty’s Sean Duffy series. He has a gift for phrasing, pitch, and accents that allows him to clearly distinguish several characters. Once the characters are established, his delivery is so crisp, you don’t need attribution to understand which character is speaking. I enjoyed the second book so much that as soon as I listened to it, I started it over and listened again from beginning to end.