Table Of Content
River bribes a taxi driver in Stroud, who reveals he drove Chernitsky to an airfield and flying club in Upshott, but was instructed to lie about it and call a number should people come looking. Lamb meets with Taverner and convinces her to fund a fake ID and cover package for River, who he then meets and instructs to investigate the airfield and its owner, Duncan Tropper. Taverner is dealing with now-Home Secretary Peter Judd regarding a large upcoming anti-capitalist protest in London.
Sloughhouse, California
David dismisses River's theory that Bough's death was the work of the FSB or related to a conspiracy, but warns River to be careful. Hassan's kidnappers – Moe, Larry, Curly and Zeppo – hold him hostage in a London terrace basement, with it transpiring that Simmonds is behind the kidnapping. River, having copied the contents of Hobden's USB drive before delivering it to Regent's Park, realises it contains no information and manipulates a rival, James "Spider" Webb, into confirming the same. Standish begins having flashbacks to the death of a former colleague of hers and Lamb's, Charles Partner.
Slough House, Book 5.5 The (Marylebone) Drop (Novella)
Given that the most recent novel came out in May 2022 and the TV series has already been renewed for a second series, it's very likely there will be more. Brexit has taken its toll, members are dying in strange circumstances, and the office has been wiped from official records. One such slow horse is River Cartwright who could not have been more frustrated at his failure and having to transcribe tedious cell phone conversations. Mick Herron combined his idea with that of an old and odd-looking building he used to walk past while he was on his daily commute. The building had a dingy black door slapped between a dodgy convenience store and a bizarre-looking restaurant. They would instead place them somewhere where they would be out of the way of the real spies and could not bother them as they did their work.
Zoë Boehm series
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Moreover, these novels are all about friendships tested in death and life situations and forged from the common bonds of disappointment. Jackson Lamb is the head of Slough House and a former Joe, or field agent in Slough House slang. This might explain his loyalty to his team when they are in peril, and makes his otherwise rude and bullying behaviour towards them forgivable.
Meanwhile, in Regent’s Park, Diana Taverner’s tenure as First Desk is running into difficulties. If she’s going to make the Service fit for purpose, she might have to make deals with a familiar old devil.
The Secret Hours is set around the time of or after Bad Actors but includes a section set well before the series begins. Herron’s is a new and very welcome flavor of spy fiction, grouchy and funny, in keeping with our muddled times. Let the TV series lure you up the grubby back stairs of Slough House, and you’ll have seven (soon to be eight) crackerjack novels to keep you going until Season 2. David discusses the "cicada" theory of Russian sleeper agents embedded in British society, which MI5 dismissed as a hoax after no sleepers were found and discovered that the programme's alleged mastermind, Alexander Popov, did not exist. He tells River that Bough went AWOL in East Berlin and was assumed to have defected, but returned drunk. Bough claimed to have been kidnapped and tortured by Popov, who force-fed him brandy, but was fired.
Slow Horses
Taverner confronts Judd at his home, revealing that calls he made to his far-right contacts after Hobden's visit resulted in Black's death and the mission being compromised. Tearney returns from the US, ordering all loose ends be tied up after Taverner further lies to her about the operation. Curly forces Larry and Hassan to a secluded woodland at gunpoint to carry out the beheading. Larry frees Ahmed and attacks Curly with an axe but flees, which enables an injured Curly to recapture Hassan. Larry arrives at a seaport in Harwich but is shot dead by the "Dogs" on the orders of Tearney, who plant a weapon on his corpse to justify the killing.
It’s not universally true – no-one likes the character Roddy Ho, for example – but River Cartwright and Catherine Standish form a bond, as do Louisa Guy and Min Harper, and Shirley Dander and Marcus Longridge. In the dilapidated offices of Slough House, these files spooks spend their time on various pointless tasks, designed to break their will and bring about their resignations, avoiding the hassle, expense and bad publicity of employment tribunals. One of the first things to appreciate is that each novel is an underdog story – a group of individuals, under-qualified and under-resourced, who have to beat their better-off cousins at The Park to save the day. A drop, in spook parlance, is the passing on of secret information. Old spooks carry the memory of tradecraft in their bones, and when Solomon “Solly” Dortmund sees an envelope being passed from one pair of hands to another in a Marylebone café, he knows he’s witnessed more than an innocent encounter. But in relaying his suspicions to John Bachelor, who babysits retired spies like Solly for MI5, he sets in motion a train of events that will alter lives.
Herron's short stories have been regularly published in Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine and some are collected in the book All the Livelong Day, published in 2013. Initially the production was to consist of two series, but three additional series have since been ordered.[3] Each series has been based on an individual book in the Slough House series. The gun threat is a joke, and Piotr invites Min to drink vodka with him and Kyril.
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To them, the Cold War looks a lot like the good old days, filled with purpose, cunning, and derring-do. River in particular, whose grandfather’s status as an espionage legend is the only thing that kept him from getting the sack, idolizes those days. From boyhood, he sat at his grandfather’s feet listening to stories about British spies employing tradecraft to outwit their Soviet counterparts.
The kidnapping is only the tip of the iceberg, however—the agents uncover a web of intrigue that involves not only a group of private mercenaries but the highest authorities in the Secret Service. After years spent at the bottom, the slow horses suddenly find themselves caught in the midst of a conspiracy that threatens the future of MI5. The “Slough House” series of novels is a set of novels by Mick Herron, an award-winning and bestselling author of mystery and thriller fiction who loves to call himself an accidental spy novelist.
To appreciate them fully requires an understanding of what they have gone through before. Dander’s character arc, for example, can only really be seen through the prism of her developing friendship with Longridge. Beyond the individual storylines exist a set of meta-plots, developing over the series as a whole, which again must be read in order. River Cartwright was sent to Slough House after a training exercise left King’s Cross crashed. He’s a serious young man, and of all the slow horses the most upset at his demotion. He was raised by his grandfather, David, a service legend, and grew up hearing stories of his time in the service.
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