Slow Horses is back, woot woot!

It took me longer than it normally would to get through this book though, and I had planned to finish it before the TV show came back. But life.

Turns out it can throw a nasty curve ball when it wants.

But anyway! We’re so back!

This next installment in Mick Herron’s excellent series, sees a continuation of his winning formula: brilliant humour and smart wit with the right balance of drama and action. Herron also has a spectacular ability to follow contemporary British politics, particularly that of Brexit, and often masterfully winds both into the narrative, if not positioning them as the cause and effect, of his stories. It all comes together to make the Slough House series all that much more believable.

This time, Herron links back to the Salisbury Novichok poisonings and the uproar that Russian secret service interference caused on British soil. Feeling vengeful, and still running on the high of being made First Desk, Diana Taverner makes some bad calls. She does her best to pull strings and make deals, and finds that her hands are tied by the manipulative politician, Peter Judd, and the new character, wealthy tech and media channel owner, Damien Cantor.

Things go south so fast that Taverner even admits her mistakes to Lamb.

Which leads to our dear Slow Horses being on the run and in the dark; their safety compromised, their existence wiped from Service records, and with no idea of who to trust.

Roddy finds the anomaly during a routine hack of the HR Department and brings it to Lamb’s attention immediatley. So begins the rightful paranoia of the Slow Horse team.

And oh, how I adore our ensemble cast. It’s like seeing a great friend after a long time apart. Even the more recent additions carry favour with me, though, of course, the ones that have been with us from the start I love reading about that little bit more!

We didn’t see much of Struan Loy even in the first book, but he was one of the OG’s, and so meeting him again in Slough House was a pleasant surprise. Although, the circumstances in which we find him were less so. Yes, in book one, he did throw Lamb under the bus, and I disliked him for that, but reading about his misfortunes since then actually made me quite sad. I mean, the man’s been living in a shipping container! When I tell you my heart ached when I read that. And it was made all the worse when Struan finally thought that someone had some genuine interest in his new lifestyle idea; happy thinking that things were starting to look up for him. Only for it to go the way it did.

I really felt quite dispirited.

I don’t think it helps that, with the Apple TV+ adaptation, we are able to put a face to the name. In season one, Struan Loy was a kind, unassuming man who just wanted to get to know his fellow Slow Horses better after work. It was him putting in the effort to make the best of a bad situation that endeared him to me.

Tell you what though, Mick Herron doesn’t pull his punches.

Because the way the story progressed and the shocking events that took place left me reeling. I like to try and keep my reviews as spoiler-free as possible, but I will just say, the losses that we got this time were heartbreaking.

Some I saw coming; some caught me completely off guard. All were awful.

And speaking of spoilers and character reappearances; there was someone else who made a return and I just – River, why didn’t you tell Lamb about this immediatley?!

That bit did frustrate me. River, I love you, I totally would name a beloved dog after you, but my god, you can be an idiot sometimes.

I was delighted to see him though – the first Slow Horse that we ever met. He was doing a lot more field work this time, and finding himself in even more peril. I was, again, anxiously reading each page, afraid of what I would find next. It’s no secret that Mick Herron isn’t afraid to kill off characters, and growing as attached to them as I tend to; it hits like a blow to the stomach.

And can I just say that writing dialogue and keeping it natural-sounding is one of the hardest things to do. Herron makes it look so easy. The way that he is able to write conversations that also keep each character’s distinctive voice soundly intact will never not impress me.

Slough House was yet another great installment and, now that I’ve caught up, I can finally start watching season six of the Slow Horses TV show as well. The wait was killing me.

So, until next time!