Dead Lions

Dickie Bow had been out the spy game for a long time, but he wanted back in. He had never been an important spy, never one trusted with an important task, but he was a lifelong “street walker,” someone who knew how to tale someone without being seen, someone who could blend into the background without raising suspicion. And, he was the one guy who had actually seen a legendary spy, Alexander Popov. But was Popov even real? But Dickie didn’t always stay hidden, and that’s why his body was found on a bus. His cell phone had an unsent one-work text, “cicadas.” That was enough to interest some people at MI5, and some of the tasks that needed to be done to investigate what Dickie was after were assigned to the Slow Horses.

Dead Lions is the second book in a 5 book series, Slough House. All of the characters in the Slough House are spies who screwed up, who blew an assignment. Because it is not so easy to fire a spy, MI5 chose to give them the most boring of assignments as a way of inducing a voluntary retirement. None of the slow horses had ever gotten to return to Regent’s Park where the real MI5 brain trust worked, and like Dickie, they all wanted back in the game they had trained for.

Cicadas, insects that stay buried for 17 years before emerging to activity, was a clue that somewhere in England lived a Russian sleeper cell which was being activated 21 years after the Berlin Wall came down.

The cast of characters that author Mick Herron introduced in the first book, Slow Horses, are as intesting as the characters of Louise Penny or even Daniel Silva – and that is remarkably high praise. The primary protagonist is Jackson Lamb, who unlike penny’s Armand Gamache or Silva’s Gabriel Allon, is not refined or likeable. Really, he is a most disgusting creature with vile and extreme habits. But is at the top of the Slough House for a reason, and he knew Dickie Bow from their days together in Berlin during the height of the Cold War. Along with Lamb are the slow horses about whom we learned more, River Cartright, Roderick Ho, Min Marper, Louisa Guy, Catherine Standish. Herron introduces a couple new ones, Marcus Longridge and Shirley Dander, which allows him to kill off one of the others. 

The character development, main plot, and subplots all are fantastic. Herron has written 11 novels, and I’ve now reviewed two of them. I’ve already downloaded the third and fourth books of the Slough House series. We at MRB have a new author to get excited about. These books get my very strong recommendation.