Slow Horses

Slow Horses by Mick Herron

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Slough House is an overlooked, unimportant, run-down annex of MI-5 (or, simply, “Five.”) Slough house is where Five sends its dead-weight, agents who have screwed up colossally or become undependable because of drink or neurosis. The agents no they are losers, a legion of the lost, chiefly because the chief of Slough House, the gross, corpulent, blasphemous Jackson Lamb, delights in telling them that they are utter losers.

River Cartwright has been condemned to Slough House because he confused the description of a terrorist and got the wrong man. Or maybe River was set up. Since River's grandfather was a legend in the service, River is not cashiered. Instead, he sent to the “slow horses” at Slough House he where is given mundane, trivial and banal tasks that are intended to force him to quit. In addition, Jackson Lamb tells him repeatedly that his mistake caused the death of scores of Britons and cost Britain 2.5 billion pounds in lost tourism.

The first part of the book passes rather slowly as we are introduced to slow horses. There is also a plot line about the surveillance of a British journalism. Things kick into gear, however, when plots and counterplots start to emerge. At that point, we learn that Jackson Lamb really is the hero of the story. We see Lamb reveal what made him a to field agent behind the Iron Curtain.

This novel is well-written. The characters are well-drawn. There may be some plot holes, but it was a fun read.