Clown Town: Mick Herron’s Slow Horses stumble back into brilliant form

So imagine her being blackmailed by someone who has evidence of an operation in Ireland (“Pitchfork”) that went horribly wrong years ago – an operation in which the heads of people were crushed by the tyres of a vehicle.

“Taverener was left holding one end of a chain of firecrackers which, if lit, would not only burn down her career but leave the Park a charred smoky ruin.”

It does not help matters when information related to that operation comes to the attention of River Cartwright, a young agent, whose grandfather had written about it without seemingly anyone finding out. Cartwright is recovering from a coma (Russian nerve agents can do that) when he notices something odd in a film of his grandfather’s library:

“Apparently this book, which is there on the film?”

“It’s a rare and valuable volume?”

“No,” said River. “It doesn’t exist.”

Author Mick Herron brings back the misfit spies of MI5.

River Cartwright’s boss, of course, is Jackson Lamb, the legendary, unkempt, and frequently  foul-mouthed (and foul smelling) head of Slough House, a department of MI5 where agents who have made mistakes are sent to rot away, and stay out of relative trouble, or worse, be used for dirty work. As Taverner tries to get herself out of trouble, her path crosses that of River, and that pits those two rivals of the present and past of MI5 against each other – the brilliant, efficient Diana Taverner against the boss of Slough House and its Slow Horses (the term applied to the washouts and has-beens who inhabit the office), Jackson Lamb.

Standard Slow Horses fare, narrated with customary wit

Clown Town follows the standard template of the Slow Horses series, which started out as a series of books by Mick Herron, but is now one of the most acclaimed shows on television, and has made Gary Oldman’s Jackson Lamb a living room legend. The ninth book of the series has the usual suspects – the cynical  Lamb, the earnest and enthusiastic  River (who actually is the hero of the series, in an odd sort of manner), the brutally ambitious Taverner, the alcoholic on the mend Catherine Standish, the temperamental and drug-addled Shirley Dander and the irritating as ever computer nerd Roddy Ho, who has now gone and got a tattoo!

This is not a book for those who want their thrillers snappy and packed with action. In keeping with its name, the Slow Horses series strolls rather than gallops through storylines (the first 30 pages or so are basically descriptions of the office and characters), narrated with effortless elegance and dark humour by Herron. This is evident at the very beginning of the book:

“So many things can break a head, it’s quicker to list the things that can’t. A banana. A cuttlefish. One of those balloons party entertainers twist into sausage dogs.

Front offside wheel of a Land Rover Defender, though. Definitely top half-dozen.”

As with most books of the series, Clown Town is basically a battle not just between the good guys and the bad ‘uns, but also between what many consider the best and brightest of British Intelligence, and those who failed. And as with most books in the series, the most compelling part is not the plot, but the constant, and often very unpleasant, sparring between Taverner and Lamb. “There’s a reason I’m a First Desk, while you are working the bins.You and your kind are the rubber gloves we wear when a dirty job needs doing,” she tells Lamb, in one of their inevitable confrontations. Of course, Lamb is unfazed by this, as he keeps digging out cigarettes from different places. “Too long, didn’t listen. You finished?” he responds after a particularly long monologue.

Clown Town continues the darkly comic Slow Horses series.

Jackson Lamb rules, and still produces cigarettes like a conjuror

Clown Town is a must-read if you are familiar with the Slow Horses universe and its characters, or have been following the Slow Horses series. If you have not, then we would advise giving this a miss and starting with the first book of the series, Slow Horses. This is not your run of the mill spy thriller, the equivalent of a literary burger to be consumed quickly, but more of a five course meal that needs to be savoured over a period of time. This is a book about betrayal, loyalty, corruption and fair play, and how they often occur at places where you least expect them to be.

As always, Jackson Lamb towers above everyone else in the book. He makes a late entry, almost forty pages into the book, but is in fine form, being derisively witty and dropping quotes on every page he appears on. “Small talk’s just bullshit leaving the body,” he snaps early on.

He is hardly omnipresent (River has the longest role, as always), but as you finish the book, it is a fair chance that you will remember the middle-aged cynic who seems to be fiddling for fags, lives in a mess and needs a bath, but yet stands up for what’s right and for his team. And what a team it is: one seen by many as washed out failures and bums. But a team he believes in, notwithstanding his almost constant cursing of them, and which believes in him, although they reciprocate his cursing (generally behind his back)

“You are in charge of a bunch of clowns. So you hurry back to Slough House…” says Taverner. Lamb does. To find out what he does next, whom he annoys and curses, how he saves the day (does he? We are not telling), where he gets his next cigarette from, and to smile at Herron’s wit as he talks about back doors, which “scream like a startled goose most days”,read Clown Town.

Clown Town
By Mick Herron
Random House
345 pages
Rs 699