Book Review

It’s always a delight when you discover a writer by chance, read one book, think how good it is and then find that there’s a whole catalogue of their books to race through.

Mick Herron has been described as Britain’s finest living spy thriller writer. But his spies are far from the glossy Bond heroes we’ve come to associate with the genre. The chaps in the Slough House series are the misfits of MI5, exiled from the mainstream for various offences, put out to grass where they will do least harm, tying up other people’s loose ends.

Slough House is the run-down old building where these disgraced spies, known as “slow horses” get sent to see out the rest of their derailed careers.

Needless to say, none of them wants to be there and in this first book in the series - Slow Horses –they get accidentally drawn in when a boy is kidnapped and held hostage then scheduled to be beheaded live on the net. And who are the baddies in this scenario?

Mick Herron’s writing is stylish and funny. The plot is complex. You need to stay awake with this writer. The whole scene is sharp, sardonic and seedy and somehow absolutely gripping.

And if you get hooked, as your reviewer has, there’s a whole series to go through.

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