Dead Lions (Slough House thrillers book 2) by Mick Herron (book review).
An ex-streetwalker, Richard Bough, aka Dickie Bow, spots a Russian spook in London and pursues him out to Oxford; along the way, the train runs into a problem, and part of the trip is by bus. That’s where Bow dies, and the news is flagged by Jackson Lamb, who investigates. River Cartwright learns from his grandfather that towards the end of the Cold War in Berlin, Bow, after missing for a few weeks, said he had been captured and tortured by the Russian spook Alexander Popov, but as he was drunk and Popov was regarded as a myth, MI5 thought he had been making it up.
As the plot unravels, halfway through the book, Jackson Lamb reveals to Catherine Standish that it was a misdirection, although not that he has spoken to Taverner about getting a quick alias and some funding for Cartwright, even if he fabricated a little of what was going on. The fact that Min Harper and Louisa Guy were vetting prior to wealthy Arcady Pashkin from Russia arriving care of James ‘Spider’ Webb hadn’t escaped Lamb’s notice, although Harper getting killed nearly did.
It also gives Cartwright a chance to go undercover to find out what was really happening in the tiny village of Upshott, close to an MoD base and small airport. Oddly, Roddy Ho, back at Slough House with some direction from Catherine Standish, solves the clues. Everything from then on is a spoiler, and your security clearance isn’t higher than a mouse yet.
Interestingly, compared to the first book, Slough House are demonstrating a little more spycraft than they did. I suspect author Mick Herron realised that apart from being failures, they still had other skills and got the odd job under the line of the auditors. Interestingly, none of them make the same mistakes that got them there. Well, apart from Louisa Guy’s drug problem and Standish staying sober for so long, but that’s not spycraft. Objectively, only Lamb is the one with any real spy in the field experience, so the slow horses aren’t exactly brilliant at what they do. Even so, they do solve a major case for MI5 before going back to Slough House and relative calm. As Jackson Lamb comments, they are also going to get more foul-ups sent to Slough House.
The ‘Dead Lions’ of the title is a reference to retired or dead spooks. Even so, you do have to wonder what MI5 was doing in MI6 territory abroad.
I should point out at this point that I’ve seen ‘Slow Horses’ on Blu-ray, pulling copies from China of all places through eBay, and got it just as fast as if I were buying from the UK. They will play on Blu-ray players in the UK, and all you have to do is turn off the Chinese subtitles. Just use the ‘i’ command and do it that way rather than with the remote.
Watching the second story on Blu-ray again, there are a lot of minor changes to the plot. Lamb is smarter in the book and realised there was some misdirection far earlier but needed to show it was working. In the credits, there’s a note about a covid supervisor there, which must have been a headache in the crowd scenes, and, presumably, some of the changes were used to compensate for that. Whatever, don’t assume watching the serial is the same as if they read the book.
GF Willmetts
August 2025
(pub: Baskerville, 2013. 328 page enlarged paperback. Price: varies – get the bookwrap set. ISBN: 978-1-399-80109-9).
check out website: www.johnmurraypress.co.uk/landing-page/baskerville-imprint/
