Slow Horses: The bestselling thrillers that inspired the hit Apple TV+ show Slow Horses (Slough House Thriller 1) Paperback – 31 Mar. 2022

I've never read anything by MH before, but i watched an episode of the tv series by the same name and really enjoyed it so i bought the book and really enjoyed that.Slough House is the one place that no member of MI5 want to be, but when you make a career ending mistake, Slough House is where you get posted to.Run by the grumpy, non apologetic, argumentative and cantankerous Jackson Lamb, the slow horses as those unfortunate enough to work there are nicknamed spend their days basically shuffling paperwork and very little else. Until a British Asian lad is kidnapped off the street, his kidnappers threatening to cut his head off on camera live on the internet.The slow horses feel that they can't just sit by, twiddling their thumbs while the lad is murdered. Against orders from the MI5 hierarchy they begin to investigate. Running against time and with enemies within MI5, the slow horses have a lot on their hands, but just because they all made mistakes, it doesn't mean to say they weren't good at what they did before being sent to Slough House.With comical one liners, a great storyline and great characters both good and bad, this book is a treat. 5/5 🌟 from me.

I had been looking forward to reading this book. I'd not previously heard of the author but then saw him speaking a few times recently and liked his approach to his writing.So I bought the first book in this series (ie this one!). My husband read it first and loved it.The book has 328 pages split into 19 chapters.The plot is written contemporaneously (2020 publication) but I'm reading it in 2023 so it is amusing to see how much has changed. I'm sure the author did not intend for some of the details to be nostalgic but the mention of an iPad and a DVD rental shop set the time period very clearly.This is a proper book to read and very enjoyable. It needs time and should be read carefully to pick up all the hints and subtleties. Who knows if it is anywhere near plausible but it doesn't matter to me.There is a high level of observational detail in the narrative, creating very clear pictures for the reader and supporting the characters to give a rich, atmospheric book.Obviously some events are based on fact but there is a huge amount of fiction thrown in. A particularly clever aspect to this book is that a couple of the fictional characters are based on real people (close enough to recognise but not to trigger libel action!).The plot has a sound structure and solid progression for all the characters who are going to move into the next book.Lots of action gives the story plenty of interest and I was engaged all the way through. The plot started to confuse towards the end but I slowed down and reread a few pages then it mostly made sense.I'll certainly buy the next one.

Mick Herron’s Slow Horses, the first book in a series set in ‘Slough House’ a kind of transfer to the bottom stream for spooks from MI5 who have made mistakes, is stunning. Absolutely stunning.This is a highly intelligent, tautly written, compulsive page-turner, with a plot as highly charged and twisty turny as any reader could want, wonderfully complex, believable characters, and founded in a reality which seems terrifyingly plausible. It is bloody, violent – and, at times, very very funny.I have found my series to compulsively read on – book 4 comes out this year and I’ve been fortunate to have bagged a copy as an ARC, but, 2 and 3 will be read in order first – if I can stop the dizzy spin I’m left in, reading this one.The unfortunate challenge of writing a review, is that really, there is almost nothing I wish to say about plot – or even the cast of characters, because the best way to read this is to know as little as possible about the journey, other than to make it.All that might be useful to know, is that the title, ‘Slow Horses’ is a kind of dismissive word play, accorded to the Z lister spooks, fallen from grace, who now work at Slough House. One and all, they were operatives who, for different reasons, had been attracted to the boxing-at-shadows work of MI5, recruited for their spook-needed skills, trained for this, but, in each case somehow failed the grade, dropped a catch, failed to tick the right box. Now, they all do the grunt work associated with counter terrorism, the endless checking of videocams, CCTV, paper trails. And all are resentful and yearn to be back at the high, respected levels of the job.The only name I will provide is that of Jackson Lamb – as in, this is the first in Herron’s Jackson Lamb series. He heads up the crew of misfits, who have ended up here. Bullying, and shambolic, disliked by his subordinates and superiors, he is none the less as devious, intelligent, astute at pulling wool over eyes and mastering dissimulation as a spook must be.Having finished this one, I have no real idea where Herron might go with the later books in the series. My instinct is that we will certainly be meeting some of the ‘Slow Horses’ denizens of Slough House – not to mention the MI5 high flyer section, - again, and I suspect different characters will, in subsequent books, come into sharper relief, and take place centre stage.But, I have to hold back from saying even the most basic about plot, or other central characters beside Lamb because Herron starts the dissimulation and confounds the reader’s expectations right from the start, and you will be best pleased to read as an innocent, without knowing or second guessing in advance.All I will say is that none of the sleights of hand, the cutting between different stories all heading in the same direction, deviously and twistingly, is a gratuitous authorial series of tricks, coincidences too far etc. The territory of the book, after all is one where no one is quite what they seem, because the territory of intelligence, counter-intelligence and their friends and enemies is, of its nature – hidden, deceptive, shadowy.However…..this book was first published in 2010. There is a remarkably foresighted view of the future, and a thinly disguised character readers will ‘enjoy’ recognising. I guffawed out loud on a silent tube carriage………….Of course, humour gets laced with horror these days.I wonder what else Herron is predicting in later books in the series, and sincerely hope book 4 (published in 2017) won’t have World War 3 in mid-throes.

Interesting but I thought the motivation underlying the action was too sparse, - it’s inconceivable to me that anyone would go to such lengths, to achieve so very little!I found it hard to follow the ‘deterministic’ threads, - it seemed to me even, that results from random chance alone, would have differed so little from the results portrayed.Paragraphs, each required a diagnosis of who was speaking, and the switches between speakers were inadequately defined, for me. I regretted the death of to me, the most attractive character!The resolution was given in far fewer words than the progression to it. This resolution went surprisingly to plan, - suddenly all the counter-bars seemed to vanish.The resolution was surprisingly, less credible than the working plot, and the ending was certainly disagreeable, - dystopic in fact.

If you want interesting characters, an unpredictable narrative and measured writing, try Slow Horses. How I missed this for so long I do not know but, after binge reading the first of the Slough House series, I can't wait to read the second. Outstanding.

Mick Herron's Slough House series is utterly terrific. They're full of sarcasm, snide remarks, verbal abuse, politically incorrect banter, fringe characters, and great stories about the intelligence community in the UK. I have enjoyed every one of them. If you're a fan of the genre, or of writers like LeCarre, Follett, and Fleming, I expect you will like them, too.

Slow start😀 but strong finish✅

Well written, both serious and funny. If the rest of the series is this good I'll be happy.

I've ready the first three books in the series, and I'm certainly going to go on! They are very good in characters (really interesting and not stereotyped as usual in this kind of stories) and plots, which are smooth: again, something not exactly easy to find in spy stories. A John LeCarre' for the present time.