Spook Street
The basis for season 4 of the hit TV show Slow Horses
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4.5 • 456 Ratings
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- £5.49
Publisher Description
*Discover The Secret Hours, the gripping new thriller from Mick Herron and an unmissable read for Slough House fans*
*Now a major TV series starring Gary Oldman*
'A terrific spy novel' Ian Rankin
Twenty years retired from the Intelligence Service, David Cartwright still knows where all the bones are buried. But when he forgets that secrets are supposed to stay hidden, there's suddenly a target on his back.
The 'Old Bastard' raised his grandson to be a hero, not a slow horse. Now, far from joining the myths and legends of Spook Street, River Cartwright is part of Jackson Lamb's team of pen-pushing no-hopers at Slough House. Which doesn't mean he won't ditch everything and go rogue when his grandfather comes under threat.
Lamb worked with Cartwright back in the day, and knows better than most that this is no innocent old man. So when a panic button raises the alarm at Intelligence Service HQ, it's Lamb who's called on to identify the body. And it's Lamb who'll do whatever's necessary to protect an agent in peril.
'A modern masterpiece' Irish Times
'Outstanding' Daily Telegraph
APPLE BOOKS REVIEW
Mick Herron’s Inside Story: I write an ensemble cast, but River [Cartwright], in many ways, has always been the central figure. He’s right there—on page one of Slow Horses. So the notion of River’s grandfather; someone who’s spent his whole life keeping secrets and guarding secrets, suddenly being unable to tell what was secret anymore, as he succumbed to dementia, was interesting to write.”
I realised that I could bring River’s father into it, who hadn’t really been referred to at all. We know a bit about his mother, but we didn’t know about his father. So that automatically starts bringing out new depths, really, when you are writing such well-established characters. It wasn’t simply a matter of another story for these characters to perform in. It was another part of these characters’ lives that I haven’t looked at before. There’s quite a grimness about it, about that notion, which underlies the whole process of Spook Street. And then there was, of course, the bombs. I wrote a passage here as a deliberate tribute to city of Manchester and its response to the terrible bombing that occurred there [in 2017], the way that people can all stand together, even in times of distress, and say: ‘We are not afraid. We will not live our lives like this.’ I found the response very moving and I wanted to pay tribute to it.”
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In Herron's terrific, and terrifically funny, fourth Slough House novel (after 2016's Real Tigers), London's intelligence teams are on full alert after a suicide bomber kills dozens in a mall. But at Slough House, the home of British spies put out to pasture, the immediate need is to investigate the possible murder of one of its own, River Cartwright, apparently shot while seeing to his grandfather David Cartwright, a former powerful member of the Service, now a paranoid old man. Those in charge quickly figure out the people responsible for the bombing but don't understand the motive. Meanwhile, the Slough House team, led by the despicable Jackson Lamb, tries to figure out who would go after River. The search leads to France and a recently torched commune, an odd m nage of Americans, Russians, and children. The two plot lines slowly converge amid a heady mixture of deadpan humor, deft characterizations, and acute insight ("A loose bullet rips a hole in normality"). The title refers to a suspicious state of mind: "When you lived on Spook Street you wrapped up tight: watched every word, guarded every secret."
Customer Reviews
Fabulous
As good as the previous Slough House books. Twisty and turny, laugh out loud in places; Jackson supplying the laugh’s obviously. Just love the books and the tv series too.
Always good to read about Slough House
I love the characters, the humour, and the plot.
French nightmare
London is hit by a shopping centre bomb killing many. River Cartwright’s grandfather - an ex spook - begins to go senile, and insists on visiting a burnt out ruin in the middle of France. Are these related? Our slow horses manage to unravel the many loose ends, proving they are less inept than they are assumed to be. Hilarious and tragic.