Dead Lions

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.)

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.

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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

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