Cat and Mouse

Dead Lions (2013) is the second novel in Mick Herron's Slough House series, and the subject of season two of the tv series Slow Horses. 

London's Slough House is an off-shoot of the British spy service MI5, where incompetent or disgraced agents remain on the payroll doing tedious archiving or low level grunt work, forever hoping to make their way back to MI5 headquarters, 'The Park'. The man overseeing these misfits, Jackson Lamb, knows they will burnout, quit or die before ever being redeemed. Lamb himself was stationed in Berlin at the height of the Cold War, before he wound up as head of the Slow Horses. Dismissed by The Park as a washed out annoyance, and physically resembling the same in his stained clothes and greasy visage, Lamb has dirt on 'Second Desk' Diana Taverner. Despite his appearance and the time he spends sleeping, drinking and/or smoking at his desk, Lamb possesses a razor-sharp mind which allows him to piece together clues which would be undecipherable to others.

Lamb is out in the field for much of Dead Lions. An old chum from his Berlin days has been found dead on a bus in Oxford. Dickie Bow's demise doesn't raise an eyebrow anywhere, but Lamb knows there is more to his death and starts to investigate Bow's movements leading up to his death. Bow left a cryptic message, which hints at the return of a ghost from their past. 

Back at Slough House, Louisa and Min have been seconded to help The Park with a Russian oligarch that may become an asset. Roddy Ho continues his online creeping. Newcomers Shirley Dander and Marcus Longridge join the team, wary of each other. River Cartwright is given an opportunity to go undercover, ever hoping to prove himself. Meanwhile Standish, the steely core of Slough House, keeps the wheels turning. As all these agents busy themselves in seemingly unrelated tasks, the pace quickens leading to a heart-racing crescendo.

 

I loved Dead Lions. Herron has done something remarkable in creating a modern thriller which hints at Cold War old school spycraft and marries this with satire and laugh-out-loud dialogue. Herron's genius comes in his innovative use of scene setting, bookending this novel with a walkthrough of Slough House by a cat and mouse. His pacing in brilliant and I admire the way Herron weaves the various strands of the story together.

Having seen the series, the characters are forever imprinted in my mind as the actors who play them. But this is not a bad thing, as the series is perfectly cast. There are several differences between the novel and the television adaptation, that also make for interesting reading. So glad I have a box set of these books on hand as I am sure it won't be long before I visit Slough House again.

 My reviews of other books in Mick Herron's Slough House series can be found on this blog:

• Slow Horses (2010)