Nobody Walks (2015)– this book uses some of the Slough House world and characters, but it's not officially part of the series Catherine Standish is Lamb’s assistant, and a recovering alcoholic. She used to assist Charles Partner, who was First Desk at Regents Park until his suicide – something it’s rumoured Lamb might have had a hand in arranging. Partner had been selling secrets to the Russians. Mind you, I am not the only one who took their time coming across this series: Dead Lions wasn’t able to find a UK publisher for years and sank without a trace initially according to The Guardian, and Waterstones made Slow Horses their thriller of the month seven years after it first publication. They have a charming interview with Herron here. Louisa Guy – She’s surprised to find her relationship with Min giving her a purpose and strength she forgot she had. A suspenseful, professional-grade north country procedural whose heroine, a deft mix of compassion and attitude, would be welcome to return and tie up the gaping loose end Box leaves. The unrelenting cold makes this the perfect beach read.

Molly Doran, the Park’s archivist, “a squat, suspicious shape: a woman in a wheelchair; quite round, with a messy cap of grey hair, and a face powdered to clownish white” who was able to greet Lamb with real warmth. I hope we see more of her, as the world needs more role model archivists and librarians! 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. Nor does Herron like to protect his slow horses from the real dangers that they face. Let’s be blunt. People die. Characters who you will have liked will not make it to the end of the novel. This does invest the plot with a certain tension and with the exception of Lamb I am not sure I would put money on anyone surviving the next five books. But at least we know that, if any of them end up dead, Lamb’s comments to River will probably hold true for all of them and, I suppose, that beneath the flatulence and racism and antagonism, this probably counts for loyalty or at least courtesy: What happens when a high-level spy starts showing signs of dementia? If he's unable to keep old secrets, will someone take care of him for good?Dead Lions is a superb follow up to Slow Horses and proves that the Slough House series is well placed to have a long life, even if you can’t say the same for his characters. White, Peter (15 November 2019). "Gary Oldman To Star In Spy Drama 'Slow Horses' For Apple With 'Justified's Graham Yost Exec Producing". Deadline Hollywood. Archived from the original on 7 September 2020 . Retrieved 26 January 2021. Over at Regent's Park, Diana Taverner is also running into difficulties. Accomplishing her goals for the Service might require a deal with the devil. Funny, clever . . . Genuinely thrilling. The novel is equally noteworthy for its often lyrical prose.” I mean every bloody word, my son. But it will all seem trivial compared to what’ll happen if you don’t start making sense sharpish. Capisce?”

Full of style and cynical humor . . . Has all the punch-your-lights-out action of a movie thriller.” Shirley Dander and Marcus Longridge are the odd couple, though they’re not even a couple. She was in comms at The Park before she laid out a co-worker, and also has addiction issues. He used to break down doors and carry a gun before his gambling problems compromised him. If his marriage had been strong to begin with, he sometimes lectured himself, it would have survived his professional humiliation, but the truth, he’d come to understand, held a tighter focus. If he himself had been strong, he would have ensured that his marriage survived. As it was, his marriage was definitely a thing of the past, what with Louisa being on the scene. He was pretty sure Clare wouldn’t tolerate that particular development, and while he hadn’t told her about it, he wasn’t convinced she didn’t know. Women were born spooks, and could smell betrayal before it happened. A second anti-terrorist workout for the sorely tried denizens of Finsbury’s Slough House ( Slow Horses, 2010).It will be interesting to see just how far the Russian sleeper tale goes, especially in the current climate, but a third of the way in and it seems to be a good one, with the potential to top the first, if they can find a way to better Oldman's Lamb driving into MI-5 HQ blasting The Proclaimers' 500 Miles whilst ignoring the squad of armed police that surround him. In Oldman we trust. Ho, Dander and Standish deduce that Chernitsky never left the UK, and just planted his phone in the luggage of a touring folk band at the airport. Using his cover as a journalist from The Times, River befriends Kelly, the daughter of the suspected sleeper agent Duncan Tropper. He discovers through her that Tropper and his wife Alex used to be student radicals who moved to the village from London. The family invite him to dinner and introduce him to their visiting friend Leo, who is actually Chernitsky. As Lamb investigates Bow’s death, and as Guy and Harper draw closer to the date of Webb’s meeting with the oligarch, their separate plotlines begin to converge, leaving readers wondering who’s conning whom, and to what end. a b Yossman, K.J. (29 April 2022). " 'Slow Horses' Adds 'Peaky Blinders' Star Aimee-Ffion Edwards, 'This Is Going to Hurt's' Kadiff Kirwan to Season 2 (EXCLUSIVE)". Variety. Archived from the original on 2 December 2022 . Retrieved 2 December 2022. Molly Doran – Old MI5 hand who lost her legs at some point in the 90’s. Knows where the bodies are buried.

Taverner meets with Lamb and reveals Ahmed is the nephew of the second-in-command of Pakistani Military Intelligence. His kidnapping and intended rescue is an unsanctioned false-flag operation masterminded by Taverner herself to potentially increase cooperation with Pakistan as well as neutralise and intimidate the far-right. She claims to have an operative embedded with the Sons of Albion who organised the kidnapping but will also facilitate the rescue. It is also revealed that Standish narrowly escaped a treason charge through her links with Partner and his death. The plotting which did lead you by the arm into cul-de-sacs and dead ends before pulling the rug under your feet – and the denouement in the Cotswold village of Upshott was effective. For a moment Lamb has the uncomfortable sensation that this mouse is staring into a past he has tried to bury, or peering into a future he’d sooner forget. And then he blinks, and the mouse is nowhere, if it was ever there at all. ‘What this place needs is a cat,’ grumbles Lamb, but there’s no one there to hear him.” Steven Waddington as Jed Moody (series 1), an ex-member of "The Dogs", an MI5 internal affairs and tactical unit.This is a book that can be enjoyed by anyone – whether you are a fan of spy thrillers of not. The story line is good (though the revenge motivation given near the end maybe a tiny bit implausible) – but the convoluted and exciting plot is just the medium for some scintillating prose and a panoply of beautifully crafted characters. href: https://img1.od-cdn.com/ImageType-200/0111-1/{5D9AB3D4-30A4-4647-91F7-5ECE27D2D0D0}Img200.jpg One of his characters, Peter Judd, an unscrupulous, ambitious and amoral politician, seems strangely familiar. A quotation from the first book, Slow Horses, needs, I think, no further explanation: “With a vocabulary peppered with archaic expostulations – Balderdash! Tommy-rot!! Oh my giddy aunt!!! – Peter Judd had long established himself as the unthreatening face of the old-school right … Not everyone who’d worked with him thought him a total buffoon ... but by and large PJ seemed happy with the image he’d either fostered or been born with: a loose cannon with a floppy haircut and a bicycle.” Filming of the first series began on 30 November 2020 in England, and continued into February 2021, with Gary Oldman and Kristin Scott Thomas spotted on set in Westminster, London. [10] In July 2021, filming continued in Stroud, Gloucestershire. [11] It was originally intended to film earlier in 2020 but was delayed due to the COVID-19 pandemic. [12] [10] A romantic relationship in Istanbul ends badly. Lamb hits the panic button when one of his Slow Horses fails to show up for work.

Spook Street is one of the darker novels and what little comic relief there is, is provided by Roddy Ho getting a girlfriend, a plot thread which is pulled in the follow up novel, London Rules. It also lays the ground for the events of Joe Country, and at the same time introduces a series villain, ex-CIA operative Frank Harkness. This novel is a series highlight for me, and went on to win the CWA Ian Fleming Steel Dagger Award as well as being shortlisted for the CWA Gold Dagger Award, The British Book Awards and The Theakston Old Peculier Crime Novel of the Year Award.

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Over at Slough House, the agents are excelling at their specialty – complicating an already difficult situation. Slow Horses was published by Constable in 2010, but the firm declined the opportunity to publish the next book in the series in the United Kingdom due to disappointing sales of its predecessor. Soho published the Slough House novels in the United States, and John Murray started republishing the series in the UK from 2015. [7]