Alex Peake-Tomkinson

A toxic atmosphere: Slough House, by Mick Herron, reviewed

Novichok poisoning is central to the latest novel in the series – and the slow horses are more despondent than ever

Mick Herron at the Edinburgh Book Festival in 2019. Credit: Getty Images

Mick Herron has been called ‘the John le Carré of his generation’ by the crime writer Val McDermid, and in the 11 years since the first of his ‘Slough House’ novels appeared they have become a best-selling phenomenon. Herron echoes le Carré’s horror at Brexit, which in this latest instalment is only referred to as ‘You-Know-What’. Slough House is, in fact, nowhere near the Berkshire town but an office building close to the Barbican, and no less drab for it. This is where a bunch of ‘slow horses’, spies who have blotted their copybooks in various ways, nominally work.

Herron has said: ‘Failures are more interesting than successes: they have all that regret, they act out, they feel thwarted and frustrated, not fun to live but great fun to write about.’ He certainly appears to be having great fun in Slough House, the seventh novel in the series, and his enjoyment is rarely at the expense of the reader’s. But he occasionally overdoes it in his portrayal of Jackson Lamb as the most flatulent and misanthropic of the slow horses. We could probably all have lived without six descriptions of the anti-hero breaking wind: ‘He farted, a three-note trumpet solo, then eased his buttock back onto the bench.’ Lamb is set to be played by Gary Oldman in an Apple TV series and it will be interesting to see how the Oscar-winning method actor approaches this. And Lamb describes a character with dwarfism as a ‘lawn ornament’ with possibly a little too much relish. But on the whole, the verve with which Herron writes carries the reader along.

Diana Taverner, the steely head of the service, authorises a hit in Kazan in response to a Novichok poisoning which earns her the approval of Peter Judd, a former home secretary now working in PR.

Already a subscriber? Log in

Keep reading with a free trial

Subscribe and get your first month of online and app access for free. After that it’s just £1 a week.

There’s no commitment, you can cancel any time.

Or

Unlock more articles

REGISTER

Comments

Don't miss out

Join the conversation with other Spectator readers. Subscribe to leave a comment.

Already a subscriber? Log in