Slough House by Mick Herron

I was recommended the Slough House series by Mick Herron by a friend. I’m aware there is a TV series – Slow Horses – based on the novels, but I’ve never seen it because I don’t have the right streaming service.

I bought Slough House with my Christmas money, along with various other books including Nesting, Munichs and Us. Unfortunately, I didn’t realise it was one of the later books in the series. I considered buying the first book and working my way through to this one, but I decided to just read it. I’ve read books by Jo Nesbo, Ian Rankin and Val McDermid out of order in the past and it has never been a problem. Any my husband liked that I was reading a book with Tower Bridge on the cover at the same time as he ran the London marathon – over Tower Bridge of course!

The slow horses are spies. In Slough House, their records have been wiped, so they no longer exist officially. But they still feel under threat and are sure they are being followed. A couple of ‘accidents’ don’t feel like accidents. There is corruption and Russian involvement.

Written in early 2020, Slough House feels very believable and realistic, with a new populist movement on the streets of London, which reminds me of the far right and ‘flag shaggers’ we’ve had to put up with lately. There are also references to the novichock attack in Salisbury in 2018.

To be fair, it was pretty confusing reading it with none of the context of the previous books. I can say that I enjoyed it and it was very well written, with a good dose of dark humour. But I did feel I only understood everything on a surface level, especially as there were a lot of characters.

I will definitely go back and read from the start of the series!