Review: Slough House by Mick Herron (Slough House book 7 2021)

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 If you haven't read any of Herron's Slough house series, you need to start with the first, Slow Horses. These books are one of a very short list of favorite series for me and over seven books Herron hasn't missed a beat. Seriously, every one is a delight to read and the worst part is having to wait a year for another.

So you haven't read any of these books and are wondering if they might interest you. Here's is a summary. These are spy stories set in the world of MI-5, the British domestic security service. Agents who have disgraced themselves and won't resign and can't be fired, are sent to a dead-end job at Slough House where they are set to boring data correlation tasks. The rest of the service refers to these agents as the slow horses. Presiding over Slough House is Jackson Lamb, an obese, flatulent, alcoholic, chain smoking, abusive nightmare of a boss who respects no one and somehow gets away with it probably because he knows where all the bodies are buried. Trouble seems to find its way to Slough House and, though no longer field agents, the misfit crew has to sort things out or get sorted out themselves.

I would say that it helps reading these books if you have some idea about current affairs and public leaders in Britain. Herron pokes fun at them frequently. Brexit is only referred to as You-Know-What.

Herron has a lot of fun with the agents of Slough House. Jackson Lamb is an HR nightmare but reaction to his abusive treatment of those working for him ranges from snorting to laugh-out-loud. I've read that Gary Oldman is in the running to play Lamb in a TV series which makes me a little nervous. He can pull off the sarcastic and scathing abuse that Lamb supplies but he doesn't have the physical appearance which is a big part of Lamb's character. They can't ignore that. But, then again he did play Churchill so there's hope. 

Roddy Ho is Herron's special target. Roddy is a computer hacking genius who fancies himself as devastatingly attractive to the ladies and an ace spy. He is an ace hacker but everything else is in his mind and his colleagues want as little to do with him as possible.

The rest of the agents are also well drawn characters:

• River Cartwright, grandson of a MI-5 legend
• Shirley Dander, alcoholic and drug abuser prone to violence and handy to have in a fight,
• Catherine Standish, a former alcoholic and long suffering administrative assistant to Lamb
• Lech Wicinski, who started looking at something he shouldn't have and had child porn planted on his laptop
• Louisa Guy, competent, not lucky in relationships

While Herron packs in humor, there are real life and death consequences for the slow horses and this is the case as well in Slough House.

It is nearly impossible to summarize Slough House plots because usually there are multiple things going on that don't come together until the end. Here is what I can say about Slough House:

• Jackson Lamb remains Jackson Lamb and might be more offensive than usual in this book. 
• A tit for tat operation against the Russians puts the agents in Slough House in danger.
• There is the unexpected return of a former slow horse.
• Diane Taverner (Lady Di), first desk at MI-5, finds that a cooperative arrangement made in the last book (Joe Country) has dangerous ramifications.
• Behind the scenes political machinations continue
• The book ends with three enormous cliff hangers so Herron better be hard at work on number 8.

Slough House is a little more straightforward and doesn't juggle as many seemingly unrelated plot elements and other books where you don't figure out what's going on until the end. Herron continues to be the master of complicated yet nice tight stories. I'm thinking of rereading the entire series to see how he builds layers on this environment with each book

Keywords: British security services, MI-5, spies