Review of "Dead Lions: Slough House #2" by Mick Herron

This is the 2nd book in Mick Herron's 'Slough House' (Slow Horses) series, about British MI5 agents who've made a bad mistake and are relegated to working in a dilapidated building called Slough House. The agents, called 'slow horses', are given nothing but monotonous paperwork to do, and are itching to get back in the game.

The slow horse brigade consists of Catherine Standish - a recovering alcoholic who's well organized and capable.



Louisa Guy - a sharp young woman; and Min Harper - a headstrong young man. These two agents have become romantically involved.



Roderick Ho - a computer whiz;



River Cartwright - an ambitious fellow whose grandfather was an MI5 agent;



Marcus Longridge - a forward-thinking newcomer to Slough House;



and Shirley Dander - a clever woman who's just joined Slough House.



The man in charge of Slough House is former spy master Jackson Lamb, an offensive slob who hurls insults at people, smokes too much, eats too much, and needs to shower and use deodorant. Regardless, Lamb feels compelled to look out for his 'joes' (agents), even those he worked with decades ago.



Thus when a long-ago informer called Dickie Bough is found dead on a bus, Lamb investigates.



Lamb believes Bough was murdered, and his suspicions are confirmed when Lamb finds Bough's cell phone between the bus seats, with an unsent text reading 'Cicadas'.....a word used for Russian sleeper agents. The slow horses are given the task of scanning CCTV footage to look for Dickie Bough and whoever was following him, and to determine where the perpetrator went after killing Dickie.

This eventually leads the investigators to an isolated country town called Upshott, which was built near a military base that has now closed down. The one outstanding feature of Upshott is a flying school and tiny air field, with several residents who fly small planes.



River Cartwright goes to Upshott undercover as a writer, and he mingles with the residents and tries to sniff out skullduggery. River gets involved with a pretty female pilot, which leads to trouble.



While all this is going on, an agent called Spider Webb - who works at Regents Park (the REAL MI5 headquarters) - recruits slow horses Louisa Guy and Min Harper for his own project.



Spider has arranged for a meeting between a Russian oil baron and British representatives, and Louisa and Min are in charge of security for the Russian. Spider believes the oil deal will benefit Britain and result in Spider's own professional advancement.

It turns out that there's a connection between Dickie Bough's death, the town of Upshott, and the Russian oil baron. All this leads to an exciting climax, with the slow horses getting in on the action.

For me, this story - with lots of Russian names - got a little confusing, but Heron's characters and humor make the book worth reading. I keep hoping that miserable worm Spider Webb and his manipulative self-serving boss Diana Taverner will get thrown out of Regents Park, but we'll have to see about that.



The Slough House books have been adapted into mini-series that can be seen on the small screen. However the 'Dead Lions' episodes depart somewhat from the story in the book.

Rating: 3.5 stars