Slow Horses

Slough House, Book 1

By: Mick Herron

Narrated by: Gerard Doyle

Length: 10 hrs and 46 mins

Publisher's summary

Slough House is a dumping ground for British intelligence agents who've screwed up cases in any number of ways - by leaving a secret file on a train or blowing a surveillance. River Cartwright, 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.

Is the victim whom 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 has his own agenda.

©2010 Mick Herron (P)2017 Blackstone Audio, Inc.

Brilliant!

This was a slow burner which erupted into an intriguing and gripping
listen.. thoroughly recommended!

Great read!

This is a terrific Spy story with lots of twists and turns (all believable)! Interesting characters who surprise us frequently. The story kept me on the edge of my seat, and Gerard Doyle is simply the best reader/narrator living!!

Excellent spy drama

With the classic feel of the great British spy novels Slow Horses excels creating a wonderful group of characters together with a thrilling story to make an excellent book with an excellent narrator. Highly recommended.

Why have I never heard of this series before?

The other day, Ann Cleeves said on Twitter that this series is a must-read. So I bought the audio which, as it happens, is narrated by one of my favorites. It's a spy thriller with a taste of Camel Club or Tinker, Tailor but it is humorous and quirky without being slapstick and I love it. Bought the second in the series and about to start listening to that.

Promising Concept Hampered by Style & Contrivance

There are a lot of good ideas percolating in this one, and that gives me enough optimism that I’m tempted by its sequel, but there are also a lot of deep problems that keep this from being an especially memorable work as it stands.

Above all, the great idea is that our collective protagonists are a group of MI-5 British intelligence agents who have all screwed up in one way or another. One shut down the London tube for a day when he had his squad hold a gun to a suspect a with a blue flannel over a white t-shirt when the real suspect had the reverse colors. Another slept with the wife of the Venezualan consul. Another drank too much. And another simply forgot a confidential file on the bus.

They’ve all been exiled to the dead end of “Slough House,” a place named after the suburb so awful and backwater that it’s where they set the British version of The Office. (And the American version chose Scranton, where I work and think of at least partly as home.) The idea is that, while others do the glamorous work of spycraft, they’re left to push paper and occasionally sort through rubbish for old credit card statements. They are the titular “slow horses,” suspect figures doomed to depressing careers and held hostage by the promise of modest pensions.

When a seeming group of National Front-like anti-immigrants determine to kidnap a young Pakistani-English man and promise to cut his head off, though, it’s the Slow Horses who have a better chance to make things right. Like Derek Raymond’s The Devil’s Home on Leave – though better than that one (while less good than Raymond’s amazing He Died with His Eyes Open) – this gives the underdogs a chance at solving a crime other law enforcement people have overlooked.

At the heart of this, that anger, that barely repressed sense of the fundamental unfairness of life, permeates the novel in interesting ways. Our potential victim, Hassan, doesn’t deserve what happens to him any more than anyone else. And we come to see that many of the fortunate thrivers don’t deserve their luck either. In a flickering way, it conjures what noir has to do (at least as far as I’m concerned): raise ideas of fundamental morality in the context of crime and the specter of amorality.

There are two major problems with this iteration of the experiment, though.

First, it’s irritating to see Herron switch perspectives as frequently and erratically as he does. The scenes here are almost all short and choppy, and he way overplays the pregnant pause; there are simply too many instances where, right before a big reveal, he changes scene. And, even more frustratingly, he’ll often rewind a bit when he returns to the thread he’s dropped. In small doses, that can work; overdone like this, it’s irritating.

Second, too much of what actually happens is contrived. Above all, [MAJOR SPOILER:] the plot to kidnap Hassan turns out to have been hatched as a counter-espionage effort by an MI-5 official who wants to frame the anti-immigrant right and, in foiling them, to win credit abroad. That’s such a bad idea that it undermines the effect of the whole set-up here; the “winners” in the race for espionage careers may not be any smarter than the Slow Horses themselves, but surely they can’t be that stupid.

And that problem persists in less structural ways too. For instance, two different characters trip during crucial physical showdowns, keeping their good-guy antagonists from having to kill them. That’s a clear failure of imagination on Herron’s part, and it’s too bad because it seems as if he could push this just a hair farther to something more compelling. We don’t need LeCarre level inspiration at every turn, but a little more attention can bolster the whole.

As I say, though, those real flaws may simply be growing pains. There’s a kernel of real inspiration here and, given the good reviews I see of the sequel, I have a sense that Herron may have moved beyond them in his later work.

The thing about an axe is you never have to reload

There is a complex twisted tale and some deep background plots here. Read carefully and enjoy like a good meal. Sarcasm and dark humor sneak in before you realize it and you have to go back and read a part again. Don't miss anything. It's all worth it! Gerard Doyle is the perfect narrator here and Mick Herron is my new favorite author!

New to Mick Herron and wondering why it took me so long.

Excellent plot, with nice underdog theme.
Most impressed with the quality of the language, and actually found myself writing down some of the more insightful phrases. Unexpectedly literate, considering the genre Read the author’s biography and realized why!

Whatever happened to...?

River Cartwright is a young British intelligence officer who fails a field exercise. He is sent to Slough House where disgraced former agents spend time in the most boring grunt work with the expectation that they will eventually resign.

River knows he was sabotaged and tries to find something real to work on in hopes of being reinstated as an active field agent. Jackson Lamb, the head of Slough House, tries to keep the group quietly working and out of trouble.

However a young man is abducted and his kidnappers threaten to behead him and filming online. The group at Slough House slowly get involved in an attempt to save the abductee's life while River and Jackson uncover activity behind the scenes at headquarters.

“AUDIBLE 20 REVIEW SWEEPSTAKES ENTRY”

I'm hooked!

I really enjoyed this book. The only reason I gave it just four stars was that the beginning was a little slow. Once you get past that it takes flight and has many acrobatic twists and turns . Can't wait to read Book number two.

In the tradition of John LeCarré

Loved this book. a pleasure to listen to. The author's turn of phrase is delightful.