Slough House: a grimy station across from London’s Barbican Estate, tucked away above a Chinese restaurant that’s perpetually closed. It’s where MI5-rejects are sent in the hopes that they will quit, thus saving the service the headache of firing them. Against all odds, it has been drafted in protecting a visiting Russian oligarch with whom the British government is interested in striking a deal, or at least set up some sort of connection the way governments do. Two Slow Horses are ordered to babysit, though it doesn’t take them long to figure out the oligarch isn’t who he says he is. Meanwhile, cold-war era spy Dickie Bow dies alone, on a bus. Slough House chief Jackson Lamb doesn’t trust that his death is entirely natural and investigates.
Dead Lions is the second volume in the Slow Horses series. No, I still haven’t seen the show. Yes, the casting is excellent. As with the first volume, this one took me a while to warm up to. Herron doesn’t really provide much explanation of what is going on and expects the reader to keep up and draw their own conclusions, which means it does require a bit of effort at times. But I don’t mind; it’s an engaging and clever novel.
The characters are fun, too. Lamb, the acronym DGAF personified, is a bit over the top, but he keeps things interesting. His subordinates, all of whom have been banished from the MI5 main building for a variety of offences, don’t particularly like him and Lamb isn’t particularly motivated to change that, but ultimately he does have their backs. The cast of characters below him are all multidimensional, though they sometimes veer into caricature territory (such as IT-nerd Roddy Ho, a particularly unpleasant fellow, though not unrealistic if incel forums are anything to go by). As a team, though, they work. And Herron isn’t particularly attached to his characters, though it’s rarely shock for the sake of shock.
The central mystery is intriguing, and I liked the way it all manages to be complex without being seemingly unrealistic. I have little idea about how the world of espionage actually works, but I would imagine it’s not always 100% foolproof. It isn’t in this case; sometimes the bad guys get one over the heroes, and sometimes they mess up. People are unreliable, technology misfires. They die when they’re not supposed to and live when they’re supposed to die.
The novel has a darkly comical tone. Most of this comes from Lamb himself, who goes out of his way to be as repulsive as possible. His conversations with his boss Diana Taverner are a sight to behold: they have a love-hate relationship in the sense that they both love to hate each other. The novel’s ending is pretty funny, too, and stops the book from venturing into overly pompous or dramatic territory. The writing seems a bit stilted at times but that might just be my translation. My library doesn’t carry the books in their original language. Nor do they seem to have any installments beyond the second one, which is a shame because I would love to read the rest of these books.
At the end of the day, if you’re looking for a smart, well-written spy novel with a sly, darkly funny edge, you could do worse.