This is the start to one of my favourite crime series based around the misfits of the Intelligence Service. Jackson Lamb leads the 'slow horses' who have been banished to Slough House. Set in a seriously twisted world, with blurts of laughter just waiting around the corner, this is a series that just keeps getting better and better. Highly recommended.
*Discover The Secret Hours, the gripping new thriller from Mick Herron and an unmissable read for Slough House fans* *Now a major TV series starring Gary Oldman*
'To have been lucky enough to play Smiley in one's career; and now go and play Jackson Lamb in Mick Herron's novels - the heir, in a way, to le Carré - is a terrific thing' Gary Oldman
Slough House is the outpost where disgraced spies are banished to see out the rest of their derailed careers. Known as the 'slow horses' these misfits have committed crimes of drugs and drunkenness, lechery and failure, politics and betrayal while on duty.
In this drab and mildewed office these highly trained spies don't run ops, they push paper. Not one of them joined the Intelligence Service to be a slow horse and the one thing they have in common is they want to be back in the action.
'The most exciting development in spy fiction since the Cold War' The Times
'The most enjoyable British spy novel in years' Mail on Sunday