Real Tigers by Mick Herron

Real Tigers is the third book in the Slough House/ Slow Horses spy series by Mick Herron. Published in 2016, it is the sequel to Dead Lions, which I read recently. I was lucky enough to find this copy in our village bus stop library, which is why it’s got a different cover to the other books I’ve read in the series.

In Real Tigers, Catherine Standish, the calmest and quietest member of the Slough House team bumps into an old flame. But Catherine knows chance encounters never happen to spooks. It’s not long before she’s been shoved in the back of van and finds herself a prisoner in an attic room.

When she fails to turn up for work, her Slough House colleagues realise this is out of character and something bad might have happened to her… River Cartwright soon finds himself in trouble at the Intelligence Service headquarters, Regent’s Park, as he tries to work out how to save Catherine.

And the rest of the slow horses get caught up in someone else’s game as they edge closer to getting some answers. But will everyone make it out alive?

Because the slow horses never really know who they can trust. Are their Service colleagues acting in the slow horses’ best interests or just looking for a scapegoat or someone to throw under the bus?

I probably didn’t enjoy this one quite as much as Dead Lions, but it is another entertaining page turner form Mick Herron, written with his trademark humour. In Real Tigers, we get to know the slow horses a bit better, particularly Marcus Longridge and Shirley Dander.

Can you read Real Tigers as a standalone novel? I would suggest not! I made the mistake of reading Slough House, the sixth book in the series, first and I was very confused.

If you enjoy thrillers, I would definitely recommend the Slough House series. Now I really want to watch it on TV! The sixth series has just come out and I’ve never seen any of them, because we don’t have Apple TV.