 First edition | |
| Author | Mick Herron |
|---|---|
| Language | United Kingdom |
| Series | Slough House |
| Genre | Spy fiction, Thriller, Comedy |
| Publisher | Soho Crime |
Publication date | 2010-06-01 |
| Publication place | England |
| ISBN | 978-1399803052 |
| Followed by | Dead Lions |
Slow Horses is an espionage novel by British writer Mick Herron, published in 2010. It is the first novel in the Slough House series, following River Cartwright and a group of disgraced MI5 agents as they attempt to escape their desk jobs.
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 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 anticks, 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 Hasan. Hasan 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.
The book utilises third-person limited point of view, with Herron frequently rotating between characters' internal monologues and perspectives.
Constable first published Slow Horses in the United Kingdom in 2010. [1] The book was published by Soho Press in the United States. [1]
The initial release of the novel was unsuccessful and Constable decided not to publish any further books in the series. [1] In 2015, John Murray acquired the rights to release the novel in the UK and released a new edition. The book began to find mainstream success after Waterstones named the novel its ‘thriller of the month’ in August 2017. [2] [1]
In 2017, Nancy Pearl included Slow Horses on a list of books she recommended on NPR. [2] Pearl described the book as "great fun" and said "Unlike some series of thrillers or mysteries, it gets better, each book is better than the one before." [3] In response, Soho printed an additional 2,000 copies of the book which sold out in 24 hours; they would go on to sell 20,000 copies that month. [2]
Herron began the book in 2008. [4] Prior to writing Slow Horses, Herron primarily wrote detective fiction whilst he was working in the legal department of an employment-issues research firm. [5]
In 2005, Herron was commuting to work when the London Underground Bombings struck. [6] The experience inspired Herron to shift from writing detective to spy fiction. While he had did not feel qualified to write about world events, [5] the bombings made him realise that “to be on the front line, you just have to be in a city. Suddenly, everywhere seems to be a viable target. So that opened the door and allowed me to write about such things.” [7] Herron references the morning during a scene where River Cartwright reflects:
People talked about that day in different ways. Either it was a story about them in which bombs happened, or it was a story about the bombs, and they’d just happened to be there. [8]
While Herron did not have any previous experience or knowledge of working in the intelligence community, he cites Len Deighton and John le Carré as influences. [9]
Writing for The Booklist, Thomas Gaughan said Herron's novel was "filled with acidic wit and engaging misdirection... with enough suspense, double-dealing, and mayhem for thriller devotees; but it's also a wonderfully funny, farcical, deeply cynical skewering of politics, bureaucrats, turf wars, and the Great Game." [10]
Jeff Quest, creator of spy fiction review website Spy Write, praised Herron's cast of characters, saying while they might not be likeable on the surface, "you understand and relate to their motivations and foible." [11] Quest also noted Herron's "ability to capture the truth of city living" and complimented his use of real world locations throughout the story.
The book was listed by Jake Kerridge in The Telegraph as one of "The 20 best spy novels of all time." [12]
The book was shortlisted for the 2010 CWA Ian Fleming Steel Dagger for best thriller of the year. [13]
On the social cataloging website Goodreads, Slow Horses holds an average rating of 4.01/5 stars from 54,500 reviews. [14]
A series adaptation of the book premiered on Apple TV+ on 1 April 2022. [15] The series stars Gary Oldman as Lamb, Jack Lowden as River Cartwright and Kristin Scott Thomas as Diana Taverner.
Edward Arnold Chapman was an English criminal and wartime spy. During the Second World War he offered his services to Nazi Germany as a spy and subsequently became a British double agent. His British Secret Service handlers codenamed him Agent Zigzag in acknowledgement of his erratic personal history.
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Slough is a town in Berkshire, England, in the Thames Valley 20 miles (32 km) west of central London and 19 miles (31 km) north-east of Reading, at the intersection of the M4, M40 and M25 motorways. It is part of the historic county of Buckinghamshire. In 2021 Census, the population of the town was 143,184. In 2021, the wider Borough of Slough had a population of 158,500. Slough borders the ceremonial counties of Greater London and Buckinghamshire.
MI5, officially the Security Service, is the United Kingdom's domestic counter-intelligence and security agency and is part of its intelligence machinery alongside the Secret Intelligence Service (MI6), Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ), and Defence Intelligence (DI). MI5 is directed by the Joint Intelligence Committee (JIC), and the service is bound by the Security Service Act 1989. The service is directed to protect British parliamentary democracy and economic interests and to counter terrorism and espionage within the United Kingdom (UK). Within the civil service community, the service is colloquially known as Box, or Box 500, after its official wartime address of PO Box 500; its current address is PO Box 3255, London SW1P 1AE.
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The Silence of the Lambs is a 1988 psychological horror crime thriller novel by Thomas Harris. Published August 29, it is the sequel to Harris's 1981 novel Red Dragon, and both novels feature the cannibalistic serial killer and brilliant psychiatrist Dr. Hannibal Lecter. This time, however, he is pitted against FBI trainee Clarice Starling as she works to solve the case of the "Buffalo Bill" serial killer. It is the most well-known installment of Harris' Hannibal Lecter series, selling over 10 million copies.
The Fourth Protocol is a 1987 British Cold War spy film starring Michael Caine and Pierce Brosnan. Directed by John Mackenzie, it is based on the 1984 novel The Fourth Protocol by Frederick Forsyth.
Seán Justin Barrett is a British actor.
The Bank Job is a 2008 heist thriller film directed by Roger Donaldson and written by Dick Clement and Ian La Frenais. It is based on the 1971 burglary of Lloyds Bank safety deposit boxes in Baker Street. It stars Jason Statham.
Sloughhouse or Slough House may refer to:
Mick Herron is a British mystery and thriller novelist. He is the author of the Slough House series, early novels of which have been adapted into the Slow Horses television series. He won the Crime Writers' Association 2013 Gold Dagger for Dead Lions.
Transcription is a spy novel by British novelist Kate Atkinson, published in September 2018.
Slow Horses is a British spy thriller television series based on the Slough House series of novels by Mick Herron. The first series, Slow Horses, premiered on Apple TV+ on 1 April 2022. The second series, Dead Lions, premiered on 2 December 2022. In June 2022, the programme was renewed for a third and fourth series. The third series, Real Tigers, premiered on 29 November 2023. The fourth series, Spook Street, premiered on 4 September 2024. In January 2024, it was renewed for a fifth series, which will be based on the fifth book in the series, London Rules. In October 2024, ahead of the fifth series premiere, it was renewed for a sixth series, which will be based on the sixth and seventh books in the series Joe Country and Slough House.
Down Cemetery Road is an upcoming British television series based on the novel of the same name by Mick Herron, adapted by Morwenna Banks and developed by 60Forty Films for Apple TV+.
Slough House is a series of spy novels by the British author Mick Herron. Herron began writing the first volume, Slow Horses, in 2008, and published it in 2010.
People talked about that day in different ways. Either it was a story about them in which bombs happened, or it was a story about the bombs, and they'd just happened to be there.