Slow Horses: Slough House Thriller 1

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✅

Dramatically well-written story concerning the second division characters of MI5 who can still punch above their weight when a crisis arises. Unusual, and in good way.

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

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.