I’m a big fan of the Slough House series and have read or listened to them all with great delight. Mick Herron’s plots about MI5 agents are satisfactorily convoluted and the characters are well distinguished from one another by their quirky–sometimes loathsome–personalities and politics. His new book, The Secret Hours, a standalone MI5 thriller, is related in plot and character to the Slough House books and filled with the same cloak-and-dagger intrigues, betrayals, and clever writing. Some of the current Slough House characters show up in earlier time periods so we finally learn their backstories although since they all change names as they move through their careers, Herron keeps readers guessing. The writing, as always, is witty and hilarious. Here’s an example, a description of the participants attending an oversight committee meeting:
“One or two were capable of independent thought, but when the whip came down, none would throw themselves in front of a foregone conclusion. All over Whitehall, the matchstick remains of once promising careers warned of the consequences of doing that.”
The book opens with the botched abduction of Max, a sixty-something former spook who’s been hiding in plain sight in a remote village in Devonshire since the nineties. The plot travels back and forth between today and 1994 to unravel the reason for his abduction, with Herron’s usual inter-office intrigue and backstabbing. Like the Slough House series, the main characters–Griselda and Kyle–are stuck in a backwater doing pointless, repetitive work until they stumble on the juicy nugget of Max’s history. Who sent them this file and why? Griselda and Kyle know they are putting their admittedly second-rate careers in jeopardy, but they long to do something that will put a sharp stick in the eye of the superiors who exiled them to the meaningless project Monochrome.
Flashbacks to Max’s spy days in Berlin reveal the earlier history of Jackson Lamb, the character that Slough House fans love to hate. (He’s brilliantly played by Gary Oldman in the Apple TV series). David Cartwright, grandfather of River Cartwright–everyone’s real favorite character–also plays a role. You don’t need to have read the other Slough House books to enjoy this one, but if Herron’s special brand of the cerebral and ribald appeals to you in this book, the Slough House series awaits.
A Reader's Place 