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Title:
Slow Horses
Series: Slough House #1
Author:
Mick Herron
Rating: 3.5 of 5 Stars
Genre:
Thriller
Pages: 309
Words:
112K
Publish: 2010
Fraggle
recommended this series in the Recommend
Me a Book V post and I think getting to it within seven months is
pretty fast, for me :-)
Slough
House is where British secret agents go when they are failures. Now,
there are different kinds of failures and so you get a real disparate
group of people here. We follow River Cartwright and boy, he IS a
failure. Not because of the incident that sent him to Slough House
(turns out he was framed) but because he won’t listen to anyone or
stop to think through the consequences of what he wants to do. Plus,
he just doesn’t listen, literally. There were several times where
the author has him “tune out” of a conversation and River goes
into his own headspace. I was kind of hoping he would die and make
the world a better place.
But
River Cartwright isn’t the only character and that is the saving
grace of this book. From an obnoxious hacker who nobody likes to the
head of Slough House, these people ARE people. They aren’t cliches
or stereotypes but actual people and I enjoyed that. The plot about
MI5 “solving” a problem it purposely created and having it go off
the rails was pretty good.
I
was pretty happy with this book and I think I’ll be reading more in
the series. That is always a good feeling.
★★★✬☆
From
Wikipedia
Slough
House is an MI5 office overseen by Jackson Lamb, a
crotchety Cold War era agent, where "Slow Horses"
(disgraced agents) are relegated to pushing paper and sorting through
bins.
Everyone
has a reason for being at Slough House. River Cartwright accidentally
shut down London King's Cross railway station during a
training assessment, a mistake he claimed resulted from being fed
false information. Louisa Guy misplaced an arms dealer, Min Harper
left confidential information on a train and Roddy Ho for his
repulsive personality. Only Sidonie "Sid" Baker, a new
agent at Slough House has unknown origins. Baker starts to be given
assignments in the field and quickly attracts the envy of other
agents. After Baker is tasked with following a disgraced conservative
journalist, Robert Hobden, Cartwright does everything he can to get
involved.
When
Hassan Ahmed, a British-Pakistani university student, is
kidnapped and held hostage by the white nationalist group
Sons of Albion, the agents of Slough House begin to wonder what they
can do to help. The Kidnappers announce they will behead Ahmed on
a live stream in 36 hours, rain, hail or shine. What the
agents of Slough House don't know is that the terrorists have been
infiltrated by a former Slow Horse, Alan Black, who has been secretly
tasked by the deputy director of MI5, Diana Taverner, to sabotage the
Kidnappers as a publicity stunt for the agency.
Hobden
suspects foul play, as he previously overheard Taverner in a bar
discussing creating sting operations on far-right political
groups. When Hobden begins to make attempts to expose the scheme
publicly, Taverner convinces Jed Moody, a discontent Slough House
agent with a background in international espionage, to plan an
assassination attempt on Hobden. Unbeknownst to Moody, Cartwright and
Baker are monitoring Hobden's house the night he attempts a masked
break-in. Before noticing the intruder, Baker reveals to Cartwright
she was assigned to Slough House to survey him. The pair rush to
Hobden's defence. A violent scuffle results in Moody accidentally
shooting Baker. Hobden and Moody flee into the night, while River
rushes Baker to the hospital.
Realising
what he's done, Moody returns to Slough House for supplies in
preparation to go on the run. Both Louisa Guy and Min Harper return
to work after hours for some private time together and rush to attack
the masked intruder. The embroiled Moody and Harper fall down the
office stairs, where Moody dies instantly after breaking his neck on
impact. After Jackson Lamb is alerted to the death of two of his in
one night, he begins to piece together Taverner's meddling in his
affairs.
Hobden
rushes to the house of Peter Judd, a conservative politician. While
Judd is reluctant to help Hobden expose MI5's antics, Hobden
threatens to release a compromising photo of a young Judd throwing
a Nazi salute.
Meanwhile,
the kidnappers have discovered and killed the traitor within their
ranks. After they change their plans and take their hostage on the
road, Taverner begins to look to hide her involvement. Taverner
begins to alert people within MI5 that one of the kidnappers was a
former Slow Horse and tries to pin the situation on Jackson Lamb.
Lamb decides to break into the MI5 headquarters with Cartwright to
find evidence and confront Taverner with proof she is framing the
agents of Slough House.
The
other Slow Horses work to track down the van the kidnappers had
hired. Working through the known aliases of the former Slough House
agent who infiltrated the group, the Slow Horses find the booking.
Roddy Ho works out how to hack the rental company's navigation system
and they alert the police of the forest where the kidnappers have
stopped. The two remaining kidnappers in the meantime had begun to
argue, disagreeing about actually killing Hassan. Hassan uses the
opportunity to escape and hide in the forest before he is saved by
the police.
In
the days after, it is announced that Robert Hobden died in
a hit-and-run accident and Cartwright discovers all records
of Sid Baker have been wiped from existence, her status now unknown.
