MI5 – Cannonball Read 17

Losers, Misfits, and Boozers

Slow Horses by Mick Herron

October 20, 2025 by finnyfinfinn Leave a Comment

Since I’m being cruelly tortured by being forced to wait a whole long week between episodes for the new season I’ve decided to go back and read the first book in the Slough House series. I’m sure waiting patiently is part of MI5 spy training, probably real advanced stuff. It is here we first meet Jackson Lamb and his motley collection of ‘slow horses’. Each one has disgraced themselves in some spectacular way and needs to be relegated somewhere they can’t do any more damage […]

Quick Thinking (Also: yay, full cannonball!)

Slow Horses by Mick Herron

October 5, 2024 by Zirza 4 Comments

River Cartwright is an MI5 prodigy; his grandfather was a famed higher-up in the organisation and he’s set to follow in the man’s footsteps. He’s nearly done with his training when his final exercise goes drastically wrong and before long, he is banished to Slough House, an MI5 outpost where those who have fallen into disgrace are sent. It’s unclear what the Slow Horses, as Slough House’s employees are known, do all day, except that it is tedious and senseless work. But then a young […]

double dipping with Rivers of London and River Cartwright

Amongst Our Weapons by Ben Aronovitch

Slow Horses by Mick Herron

June 9, 2022 by andtheIToldYouSos Leave a Comment

Once again, I am unhappy because I am all caught up in the Rivers of London universe. BUT- I thoroughly enjoyed this entry, and I was lucky enough to be able to dive right in to another irreverent British crime series! Amongst Our Weapons, the latest from Ben Aaronovitch, is a return to form. After the strange (but not entirely off-putting) Douglas Adams worship of False Value we have returned to the archaic and architectural weirdness of the rest of the Rivers of London series. It has […]

an exercise in lying to liars

Transcription by Kate Atkinson

January 11, 2019 by andtheIToldYouSos Leave a Comment

What began as a slow and cold (le Carré-esque) waiting game grew into a white hot flash of deceit, anxiety, and dangerous thrills. I cannot claim to know the full horrors and trials of World War II- nor can I draw a true comparison between that dark time and the present, but the world of this book is a different world from our current version. One constant remains: the truth is subjective. In 1940 a young woman is recruited into the fold of MI5. Europe […]

2017 Ruins Everything.

February 5, 2017 by Ellesfena Leave a Comment

Slow Horses is not a bad book. If I’d read it a few years ago, I might’ve liked it enough to read the whole series. Alas, I read it in 2017 and my attempt to find some harmless escapist fiction was thwarted by a book that hit uncomfortably close to home. The “slow horses” referenced in the title are disgraced MI5 agents. Any agent who’s botched a mission is sent to Slough House to push papers around and monitor extremist websites. There are no ops […]

Zirza on A Gothic Classic for a ReasonIt's one of those wish-you-could-read-it-again-for-the-first-time books. I loved it.
Emmalita on “It came to something when you found yourself hoping that the footsteps you heard were ghosts.”I loved the ending! I don’t think it’s been out long enough to talk about why though.
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Roland of Gilead on How can you give us the gift of a crazy character named Rando Thoughtful and then just as suddenly take that gift away? We need to talk, Uncle Stevie.I came across this randomly years after it was written because I was searching "Random Thoughtful. But I have the...
Emmalita on “Only you, Em, would refer to heartbreak as a distraction. I think I would have a more sympathetic response if I asked to marry a bookcase.”Oh my goodness, Gallifrey was beautiful. I’m sure her mittens were gloriously murdery.

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