I’ve actually read all the slow horses books but don’t seem to have gotten around to reviewing them, so it seems slightly odd to be reviewing the most recent one first.
It has to be said that if you have read all the previous books then there is absolutely nothing in this one that you haven’t already seen before. All of our familiar characters are there, both inside and outside Slough House (only the “Brains Trust” of superannuated spooks is really new) and all of the familiar situations re-occur. This might be a comfort to the reader or a bit of a disappointment for anyone expecting something genuinely new.
Since this does reprise many of the earlier works you will not be surprised to find that the problems we face are almost entirely of the Security Services own making, with their past actions (both collectively and individually) coming back to bite them. There is more effort here to keep the Slough House gang all together and equally involved in the action but I can’t help feeling that this is largely for the purpose of including much sarcastic banter between the characters, which does fill much of the book, perhaps to excess.
For what it’s worth, the story involves a retired team who used to manage a rather unpleasant IRA informant and the equally unpleasant things that they did at the time. No secret is ever truly buried of course, and no revealed secret ever goes to waste as someone can try to leverage it for their own purpose, which First Desk does, although that doesn’t go well, thanks to the somewhat unexpected intervention of the entire slow horses team.
Overall this is a pretty downbeat story, almost bleak in fact. Lamb’s vow to “burn the whole place down” is fulfilled to excess by the end of the book.
That’s not to say that I didn’t enjoy it, but it doesn’t really break any new ground and certainly doesn’t spaek any joy. For completists only I feel.