‘The Secret Hours’ by Mick Herron
Two years ago, a hostile Prime Minister launched the Monochrome inquiry, investigating “historical over-reaching” by the British Secret Service. Monochrome’s mission was to ferret out any hint of misconduct by any MI5 officer—and allowed Griselda Fleet and Malcolm Kyle, the two civil servants seconded to the project, unfettered access to any and all confidential information in the Service archives in order to do so.
But MI5’s formidable First Desk did not become Britain’s top spy by accident, and she has successfully thwarted the inquiry at every turn. Now the administration that created Monochrome has been ousted, the investigation is a total bust—and Griselda and Malcolm are stuck watching as their career prospects are washed away by the pounding London rain.
Until the eve of Monochrome’s shuttering, when an MI5 case file appears without explanation. It is the buried history of a classified operation in 1994 Berlin—an operation that ended in tragedy and scandal, whose cover-up has rewritten thirty years of Service history. (Synopsis courtesy of Penguin Random House)
The poor man has lived with the lazy comparisons to Le Carre, the even less accurate Fleming associations and, from the more learned spy fans, Len Deighton references ever since ‘Slow Horses’ really caught fire around 6/7 years ago.
Since then, there has been Gary Oldman and Apple TV, Gold Daggers, silver dagger short listings and Theakston Old Peculier Crime Novels of the Year.
In short, if not an unbroken line of amassing ever-greater garlands, as close as any writer working in the field today.
And, of course, that means that each book becomes a higher wire act as bad actors (geddit?) wait for the fall. I noticed with Herron’s last book that there were one or two snotty reviews in certain publications, as the pendulum continues its full movement towards a back lash.
In fact, I wondered to what extent Herron’s decision to move this novel out of the Slough House milieu was a pre-emptive way of circumventing that entire conversation.
Or, perhaps, it was fab service? Amongst the learned literati of the Spybrary community (nicest place on the internet, best espionage books podcast I’ve ever encountered) there has long been talk of a desire to see Herron tackle a Cold War-set story. This desire seemed settled when the short story, ‘Standing by the Wall’ was released.
And then we heard that a standalone novel was to be released.
And, I’m delighted to report, the shimmering sceptres of lesser writer’s jealousies are going to have to wait a while longer for their enjoyment of the fall.
Because it’s too good. ‘The Secret Hours’ has got it all. It has the needle sharp observations on contemporary British politics, it has the Herron characters we’ve come to expect (fully rounded in that they’re broken on all sides) and it has the exactitude of language which means that no one turns a sentence to effect better – or uses the ambiguity of the English language to better plot effect. It also has the jokes – Apple TV gets a nod here, Gary Oldman there – which implies at least that all this praise has not gone to his head at least.
It is fair to say it is not really a standalone. It’s really an expansion of the “Herronverse”, taking the themes and events encountered in other pieces from the series and then re-visited from the angle of these new characters’ perspectives.
Basically: it’s a joy. It’s clearly Herron’s world; we just live in it. Long may it continue…
Author Bio
Mick Herron is a bestselling and award-winning novelist and short story writer, best known for his Slough House thrillers. The series has been adapted into a TV series starring Oscar-winning actor Gary Oldman as Jackson Lamb.
Raised in Newcastle upon Tyne, Herron studied English Literature at Oxford, where he continues to live. After some years writing poetry, he turned to fiction, and – despite a daily commute into London, where he worked as a sub editor – found time to write about 350 words a day. His first novel, Down Cemetery Road, was published in 2003. This was the start of Herron’s Zoë Boehm series, set in Oxford and featuring detective Zoë Boehm and civilian Sarah Tucker. The other books in the series are The Last Voice You Hear, Why We Die, and Smoke and Whispers, set in his native Newcastle. During the same period he wrote a number of short stories, many of which appeared in Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine.
In 2008, inspired by world events, Mick began writing the Slough House series, featuring MI5 agents who have been exiled from the mainstream for various offences. The first novel, Slow Horses, was published in 2010. Some years later, it was hailed by the Daily Telegraph as one of “the twenty greatest spy novels of all time”.
The Slough House novels have been published in 20 languages; have won both the CWA Steel and Gold daggers; have been shortlisted for the Theakstons Crime Novel of the Year four times; and have won Denmark’s Palle Rosenkrantz prize. Mick is also the author of the highly acclaimed novels Reconstruction, This is What Happened and Nobody Walks. (Biography courtesy of https://www.mickherron.com/landing-page/mick-herron-about)
You can read my previous reviews of some of Herron’s earlier novels, Slough House here and Joe Country here
For all things Mick Herron, there is no finer place on the internet than Jeff Quest’s Barbican Station. You can follow him on Twitter at www.twitter.com/spywrite
PAJ Newman 