Slow Horses

The characters, if I'm being perfectly honest. The trend for 99% of the spy thriller genre is to have characters who are unbelievably smooth (James Bond) or who consistently get everything the author can think of thrown at them and they somehow maintain this odd modicum of control over life (Bourne, Gentry, etc.)... But the crew of Slough House is, just, well, damned. They're flawed and believable. And Jackson Lamb is the icing on the cake.

Herron creates flawed characters and hilarious situations like none other. Loved the books. Love the series.

Unlike other spy stories, Herron doesn't get tied up in an overly complex plot, but keeps the focus on the characters and their reactions.

Mick Herron had me by the end of the first chapter. His writing had me laughing out loud. As a writer, myself, I loved, and learned from his total disregard for the 'rules' of writing. His main character, Jackson Lamb, defies every convention - including the need for hygiene and lifestyle choices - yet, I believe he has a heart of gold. The discredited spies under his tyrannical care are also interesting and believable. I have since read every one of his Slow Horses books and his Oxford Series. I am an addict!

I enjoy spy novels, and I think Mick Herron is the best person writing them since John Le Carré.

The “slow horses” are a young crew of failed British spies, members of MI5, exiled to a do-nothing outpost for various mishaps. I love their hard-won camaraderie. I also love Jackson Lamb, their boss. A heavy smoking, heavy drinking, unhygienic, and decidedly non-PC lout, he’s cunning, sarcastic, and cares deeply for his crew of misfits, despite constantly mocking and demeaning them.

This book is full of twists and turns and is often laugh-out-loud funny. I enjoyed how Lamb and the “slow… show more.

Spy novels, especially the British ones, are densely plotted, densely written, densely serious stories full of politics and betrayals…without a smile to be had by the characters or the reader. The only funny ones are satires. But this book is different.

I could enjoy all the pleasures of a spy novel, with all the betrayals and plot twists, and find myself laughing even as I was caught up in the suspense and surprises. If anything, the laughs made the twists more twisty and the tragedies more tragic.

This book revitalized an entire genre for me…by knowing where to find the… show more.

The New Yorker said Mick Herron was “the best spy novelist of his generation.” I’d salute him as also the best ever writer of deadpan English wit and backchat. 

This book had a slow start as a novel, but things soon got going with a series of novels based around a fictitious bunch of misfits from British intelligence who have been sentenced to purgatory in a depressing office called Slough House in a dismal part of north London. Films and TV series followed but a quick description of the main character, Jackson Lamb, is enough to whet the appetite of… show more.

I loved this book because it’s about misfits. In this case, misfits who are spies. Spies who have screwed up and disgraced themselves and their masters at the British Secret Service. They’re led by the disheveled and malodorous Jackson Lamb, who is so smart he disdains everyone around him.

He and the Slow Horses get all the bad assignments, but I loved how each of them possessed special skills and a desire to redeem themselves. I think Mick Herron is the master of humorous spy fiction!  

I love how this book plays out almost entirely in London and solely in the UK. 

Everything in it reminds me of how great a city it is and how much I loved living there. There is always so much going on you wonder if there are spies around you!

During my early U.S. Secret Service days, I discovered something I wasn't expecting.

Secret Service agents were some of the most interesting and unusual people on the planet. Not because we were charged with a critical mission but because we came at it from many different backgrounds and directions. That's the brilliance of Herron's story.

There are many different people with many different personalities, all working toward the same goal. Some of the characters in this story reminded me of fellow Secret Service agents—even Jackson Lamb.