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The CWA Gold Dagger Award-winning British espionage novel about disgraced MI5 agents who inadvertently uncover a deadly Cold War-era legacy of sleeper cells and mythic super spies.
The disgruntled agents of Slough House, the MI5 branch where washed-up spies are sent to finish their failed careers on desk duty, are called into action to protect a visiting Russian oligarch whom MI5 hopes to recruit to British intelligence. While two agents are dispatched on that babysitting job, though, an old Cold War-era spy named Dickie Bow is found dead, ostensibly of a heart attack, on a bus outside of Oxford, far from his usual haunts.
But the head of Slough House, the irascible Jackson Lamb, is convinced Dickie Bow was murdered. As the agents dig into their fallen comrade's circumstances, they uncover a shadowy tangle of ancient Cold War secrets that seem to lead back to a man named Alexander Popov, who is either a Soviet bogeyman or the most dangerous man in the world. How many more people will have to die to keep those secrets buried?
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Creators
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Release date
May 7, 2013 -
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Kindle Book
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OverDrive Read
- ISBN: 9781616952266
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EPUB ebook
- ISBN: 9781616952266
- File size: 1225 KB
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Languages
- English
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Reviews
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Publisher's Weekly
Starred review from February 25, 2013
In the opening chapter of Herron’s funny, clever sequel to 2010’s Slow Horses (2010), low-level British spy, Dickie Bow, dies on a bus to Oxford of apparently natural causes. To Jackson Lamb, the thoroughly unlikable head of Slough House (“the spooks’ equivalent of Devil’s Island,” to which disgraced or out-of-favor British spies are exiled), Bow’s death plus a cryptic, unsent text keyed into his cellphone (the single word “cicadas”) suggest Russian intrigue, perhaps tied to a long-dormant, possibly mythical, spy named Alexander Popov. Meanwhile, two Slough House operatives are seconded to the job of protecting a Russian billionaire, Arkady Pashkin, in London for a nebulous meeting. The complex plot drags a bit in the middle, as Herron gets quite a number of balls in the air, but once he does, the narrative picks up real steam and becomes genuinely thrilling. The novel is equally noteworthy for its often lyrical prose. Agent: Juliet Burton, Juliet Burton Literary Agency (U.K.) -
Kirkus
May 1, 2013
A second anti-terrorist workout for the sorely tried denizens of Finsbury's Slough House (Slow Horses, 2010). Successful retirees from MI5 are quietly pensioned off with the tacit thanks of a grateful nation. The less successful ones--the ones who've shown themselves unfit because of unsafe personal habits or screw-ups that don't rise to the level of criminal malfeasance--are packed off to Slough House, a dead-end office from which it's hoped they'll take themselves away by resigning from the service once they realize they're never going to do anything important again. But now the embers of Slough House are stirred by the death of one of its own. Dickie Bow, formerly a street rat in Berlin who's been following legendary Russian agent Alexander Popov, evidently learned enough for one final text message--"cicadas"--before he died, apparently of a heart attack, on a London bus. Jackson Lamb, the perennially annoyed leader of the Slough House brigade, decides that both Dickie's death and the cicadas warrant closer examination. Two other Slough House colleagues, Min Harper and his lover, Louise Guy, have meanwhile been seconded as minders for the upcoming visit of oil oligarch Arkady Pashkin. Despite the fact that the Limitations Committee resolutely refuses to acknowledge the dead lions of Slough House, it disburses enough funding to send River Cartwright undercover to the village of Upshott, where he learns some truly alarming things about the cicadas just in time for the explosive climax of Pashkin's visit. Herron (Down Cemetery Road, 2009, etc.) provides a dour, twisty spy thriller with something for everyone: part post-Cold War miasma, part James Bond heroics, and elliptical withal.COPYRIGHT(2013) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
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Library Journal
Starred review from May 1, 2013
Herron's protagonists live in London's Slough House, home to disgraced M15 agents; readers might have met them already in Herron's Slow Horses. Spotting a conundrum that reaches deep into the Cold War, these eccentric spies have a chance at redemption as they employ their quirks to unravel a twisted pair of plots, one cooked up by a Soviet spy out to avenge a historic atrocity by wreaking havoc, the other a fiendish plot to heist treasure from London's Needle building. The crew also battles the stifling MI5 bureaucracy, which gives Herron untethered leave to skewer the world of spydom with wicked humor and telling details. VERDICT Herron brings a fresh and puckish eye to espionage and crime, leaving behind the stodgy staples. With zippy chapters moving among plot turns, superb drawing of oddball characters, tantalizing suspense, and smart-arse dialog, Herron delivers unbeatable entertainment for thriller fans.--Barbara Conaty, Falls Church, VA
Copyright 2013 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.
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