Slow Horses: Slough House, Book 1

4.3 | 23,581 ratings

Price: 13.62

Last update: 09-10-2024

About this item

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.

George P. Wood

A Great Start to a Fantastic Series

Reviewed in the United States on August 30, 2023

Slough House—Slough rhymes with cow—is where Britain’s MI5 sends intelligence officers it doesn’t want but won’t fire, in hope that the sheer drudgery of their assignments, combined with the dreadfulness of their boss, will lead those agents to quit. Some do. The ones who stick around are called “slow horses,” hence the title of this book.

Slow Horses opens with MI5 officer River Cartwright tracking a suspected terrorist through King’s Cross, one of Lond’s major railway stations. Unfortunately, the terrorist detonates a suicide vest before he can be apprehended, killing scores and causing millions in damage, billions in lost tourism revenue.

Just not in reality. The entire episode was a training episode taking place at King’s Cross. Yes, thousands of commuters were actually evacuated from the station, but other than that, no harm, no foul—except that Cartwright gets sent down to Slough House for crashing King’s Cross.

There, we might other denizens of this realm, which is governed by the rude, crude Cold War spymaster Jackson Lamb, who inherited his dominion for reasons that become clear only later in the novel.

The plot of Slow Horses centers on the kidnapping of a British subject, though by whom and for what reason is not immediately apparent. All that is known is that the kidnappers will decapitate him in 48 hours. Everyone naturally expects Muslim terrorists.

But here’s the thing: the victim is Muslim, but the terrorists are not. With everyone’s assumptions turned upside down, MI5 has the job of finding the victim before the kidnappers separate his head from his shoulders.

Then Slough House gets dragged into the mess in more ways than one, putting them in the crosshairs. The only solution? The slow horses need to outrace the Park—that is, Regent’s Park, where MI5 is headquartered—before they get stabbed in the back.

Slow Horses is the first in a series of novels by Mick Herron that focus on Slough House. It is a brilliant introduction to the characters and the series, and its plots are filled with enough twists to induce motion sickness. It’s a page-turner that keeps you in suspense to the end, marveling at the depths of deception spies are capable of. The dialogue is razor sharp. And the characters—especially Jackson Lamb—are sharply and hilariously drawn.

So, five stars from me. Read this book, then keep reading the entire series!

monesqe

Terrific little spy game book with a great character

Reviewed in the United States on May 6, 2024

Concise and compact, this stuffs a lot of plot, action and a great cast of characters into a surprisingly short book. It moves fast and jumps around, mostly in an endearing way (but see the last paragraph). The characters shine through anyway, especially Jackson Lamb. The twists and turns are great and the arrogance of the powerful is sort of classic here.

If you've seen the brilliant TV series, this is still worth a read, even though the series Season 1 is rather close to this direct-line plot, which often seems perfectly written for the screen. It is easy to see Gary Oldman speaking when Jackson Lamb is on the page here. The TV version admittedly does make this book a lot less essential. It's common for readers to say "The book is better," but I don't think that is true here. The TV series is notably more fleshed out (while remaining faithful to the book and characters) and frankly more interesting, given how good the cast is and the length of time they have to work. They bring this book to life in a way this short book can't quite equal.

If I had a quibble, it related less to the book--so, I'm not dinging another star--and more to the Kindle formatting of the book. As noted, it moves around fast. There are quick cuts within chapters, minor scene changes, that are not set off in any way. For example, there aren't caps beginning a new segment. (Some major cuts/scene changes have caps at the beginning of the new segment, but these quicker cuts do not.) Nor for these quick cuts do they use characters to space things out (like ##, whatever and so on). They just make a routine line break of no consequence--not even a double line break--and are then onto the next character's short scene. For example, on page 198 of my Kindle edition (as displayed on my phone) the last line of a conversation between Lamb and Taverner is: "How could this get worse?" Line break. The next sentence is: "'Because it's got to be stopped,' Hobden said." If anything, that cut gives a clue since Hobden is not part of the Lamb-Taverner conversation, but it at first looks like it is part of that conversation. Having to re-orient so quickly as the text blends into one scene after another is a little disorienting. Some formatting help would be nice.

Jack Maguire

great read

Reviewed in the United States on July 24, 2024

I loved this book. The writing is exceptionally fine. The characters are well drawn and the plot is as engaging as anything I’ve read recently. This genre tends to get derivative and a little boring but not this. I am excited to continue the series.

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