I’m really late to the Mick Herron party, but I’m glad I came. Why did it take a video streamer I can’t watch (or choose not to) to get me headed there? Apple TV+ is a subscription too far, but I wanted anyway to read at least one of the books first, having seen strong reviews over several years. So, start at the beginning:
The novel Slow Horses is Herron’s first venture (2010) into the corner of the espionage world he calls Slough House, the home of failed spies. And the reviewers are right: It is a step above a lot of spy novels and deserves the comparison (and contrasts) to John Le Carré’s.
Being late to the party, I won’t try to explain what’s happening, but instead describe one of the ways the story earns the comparison through the way it contrasts with others in the genre. (And remember, I’m discussing the novel, not the first six-part series of the television drama, as good as it must be.)
Herron uses vocabulary and cadence alongside humor and nastiness to tell the story, but most of all, he uses a narrator who confounds readers by keeping them in the dark. The narrator puts the reader in the same position of the spy – working hard to figure out what’s happening by working through how we know whether something’s true.
He violates one of the so-called rules of narration by allowing this, what?, voice to leave readers – often – without a clue about who’s in the room at the start of a scene. This know-it-all narrator doesn’t give a moment’s thought about you, stuck on the threshold, staring through a fog of verbal smoke with all the characters with backs turned toward you, looking out the other way.
It happens a lot in the early stages (e.g., p. 20[1]):
The tables were always packed too close in Max’s, in optimistic preparation for a rush of customers that wasn’t going to happen. Max’s wasn’t popular because it wasn’t very good; they re-used the coffee beans and the croissants were stale. Repeat trade was the exception, not the rule. But there was one regular, and the moment he stepped through the door each morning, newspapers under his arm, the body on the counter would start pouring his cup. …
A full page later we hear this regular’s name. He’s a character we’re meeting for the first time.
It’s how Herron’s narrator introduces us to the characters – by not telling you who they are until you’ve pretty much worked it out. Even deep into the story, he’s still doing it. Right after a sharp scene change, we get this (p. 187):
It reminded him of darker days; of missions you might not come back from. He’d always come back from them, obviously, but there were others who hadn’t. Whether the difference lay in the mission or the men, there was no way of knowing.
Tonight, he expected to come back. But he already had one body on the floor and another in a hospital bed, a pretty high casualty rate when he wasn’t even running an op.
The meet was by the canal, near where the towpath came to an end and the water disappeared inside a long tunnel. …
Only then do we learn which of the many “he” characters “he” is.
Then this (p.218):
They crossed the black river in a blue car, red memories staining their minds. Enough blood staining their cuffs and their shoes to render them bang to rights at a glance, let alone after forensic study.
The one driving said, ‘Did you have to …’
‘Yes.’
‘He was …’
‘He was what?’
‘I just …’
‘You just what?’
‘I just wasn’t ready for it.’
‘Yeah, right.’
‘I wasn’t.’
‘No, well, he wasn’t either, was he? But guess what? Makes no fucking difference.’
This deep in the story you can work it out. But with one eyebrow half-raised, thanks, Mick, for not saying who either character in this scene is.
Omniscient third-person narrators are supposed to fade into the wallpaper. That’s what writing coaches tell you, what you hear when you attend classes or join writing groups. Herron’s approach? That’s bullshit. Make them (us) work it out for them(our)selves. Don’t spoon-feed them (us). If you can’t keep up, well, that’s what you deserve. The narrator isn’t a character, but he (she? – probably not) certainly talks like it. You, readers, you’re so damned slow.
Here's one on the first page, starting with the second sentence of the novel:
Eight twenty Tuesday morning, and King’s Cross crammed with what the O.B. call other people: ‘Non-combatants, River. Perfectly honourable occupation in peacetime.’ He had a codicil. ‘We’ve not been at peace since September ’14.’
The O.B.’s delivery turning this into Roman numerals in River’s head. MCMXIV.
You have to wait until p. 83 to find out what O.B. stands for – and you have to keep looking out for it until you get there. If you can’t, well, it’s clear you too are one of the slow horses.
But so often the vocabulary and cadence come to rescue you (as on p. 210):
His thoughts were fluttering things, impossible to pin down. They led to one thing, then to another, and then to a third, which might be the first thing over again, though it was hard to be sure, as by then he’d forgotten what the first thing was.
And (p. 263):
The city never really slept; it endured white nights and fitful slumbers. Its breakfast was cigarettes, black coffee and aspirin, and it would feel like death warmed up for hours.
Spy novels, like detective stories, are epistemological tests. Most are just puzzles, with clues that help readers build their argument for certain knowledge. Evidence + theory = truth; grounds + warrant = claim, as Stephen Toulmin (2003) taught us. But some aren’t quite so simple, when ambiguity comes into the mix and reality is not only not what it seems but may not be real at all.
So … take it, take it slowly, at first, and maybe all the way through. Let the vocabulary and cadence – so different from Le Carré’s own distinctive variety – roll around in the back of your eyes as you lift their gaze from the page and close their lids and let them pretend to be ears.
Even if you’re late too, don’t miss the party.
Toulmin, S. (2003). The Uses of Argument (Updated ed.). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
[1] Page numbers refer to the eBook pagination, close but not exactly the same as print.