Library Limelights 247

 

Mick Herron. Slough House. USA: Soho Books, 2021.

It took seven books until the title became eponymous with the series. Bringing with it the crushingly ambivalent experience that only a new Mick Herron renders: if I open up page one, before you know it, the story’s over and I am bereft. Waiting forever for the next one. Even though Herron is impressively productive. For the LeCarré fans, for those who adore wicked Brit humour, those who love conspiracies wrought by slow horses, joe country, Regent’s Park, slimy politicians, and evil power brokers, Herron’s characters and intricate stories are addictive.

Slough House, under the eagle eye of Jackson Lamb, continues its dreary existence as a dead end for spies who fucked up: relegated to boring paperwork and fantasies of redeeming their way back into mainstream MI5. Until their sorry existence virtually disappears. The remaining slow horses, as of the last novel (Joe Country, LL200)—Roddy Ho of the overbearing, misplaced self-esteem; Lech Wicinsky of the ruined face; Sandra Dander the coke-fuelled dancer; cool Louisa Guy; their den mother Catherine Standish; and River Cartwright, who finds an old friend hiding in his grandfather’s house—are being stalked. Their adversaries may be spies in training or they may be a Russian hit squad. It’s London post-Brexit, the B word that everyone avoids with distaste.

Lamb is always two steps ahead of his crew, smoking like a crematorium and farting egregiously, generously spreading insults, not necessarily sharing all his intel. He knows that Regent Park’s First Desk, i.e. MI5 boss Diana Taverner, made an uncharacteristic mistake in a power play. The result is a major inconvenience for all, especially the dead bodies, but it serves to galvanize the slow horses. At least one of them seems to die by the end of each novel. The status of former slow horse Sid Baker remains murky, and I detect an incautious proximity to parody regarding a potential new recruit. In the midst of all, it’s difficult to shake the new version of the old Boney M song: “Rah-rah-rah-Putin, homicidal Russian queen ...”. Go, Mick!!

Samples

▪ When they went on about sixty being the new forty, they forgot to add that that made thirty-something the new twelve. (43)

▪ “I’m simply pointing out that when you disappoint rich and powerful men, they let their displeasure be known.” (100)

▪ And when you’d painted yourself into a corner, it was best to let the paint dry before leaving the room. (172)

▪ “ ... You are out of your bloody tree, mate! You are mad as a box of Frenchmen!” (230)

▪ “They’re awful star-fuckers at the Beeb, don’t you find?” (248)

Lamb

▪ Lamb had found a bottle of malt and was in a corner smoking, looking like a bin someone had set fire to. (37)

▪ “Piss off and do some work. And remember, all of us are lying in the gutter. But some of you are circling the drain.” (72)

▪ “My death count’s rising faster than the PM’s dick at a convent school prize day.” (193-4)

▪ “Funny thing. When I hear the words ‘trust me,’ I get the feeling someone’s pissing in my shoe.” (194)

Others

▪ [Lech] From a distance, he might have barely survived an acne attack; close up, you could see the razor marks obliterating what had lain beneath. (20-1)

▪ “One of the advantages of being a middle-aged woman,” Catherine said, “is the cloak of invisibility that comes with it.” (23)

▪ “I should warn you,” said Shirley Dander. “Last couple of times I teamed up with someone, they’re both dead.” (134)

▪ Also, Lech was more a strategy man, or had been back at the Park: gathering data, making observations; occasionally getting very particular about finicky details. Putting the anal into analyst. (159)

▪ Even unelected, Judd remained a big beast in the political jungle. But Diana had done her growing up on Spook Street, where big beasts numbered among the daily kill. (173)

▪ Roddy Ho was the Duke of Digital; everyone knew that. He was Master of the Monitor, Lord of the Laptop, but that was only half the story. Take him away from his screens and he was also King of the Kerb, Sultan of the Streets, the something of the Pavements. (178)

▪ River didn’t want to be the storyteller. He wanted to be living in the tale. (198)

Molly Doran’s world

“I’m an archivist, Ms. Standish. I deal in the paper world. My little kingdom’s full of folders stuffed with the secrets people kept back when they sat at typewriters to make their reports. I used to be told, ooh, fifteen years ago, that digitisation would put an end to my kind of gatekeeping. That was before everyone got the heebie-jeebies about how vulnerable the online world is.” She mimed the flicking of a switch. “One smart cookie in Beijing, and everything’s on the web for all to see.” (24)

First Desk socializes

“I’ve divulged nothing that could do us harm, Diana. You know me better than that. Just a little ... shop gossip.”

“You’re not in the shop, Peter. You’re not even a customer. You’re just hanging around in aisle three, hoping to nick a chocolate bar.”

“No metaphor unpunished, that’s one of the things I adore about you.” (57)

First Desk summarizes

“Did you forget what Slough House is? It’s a punishment posting. No, screw that. It’s not even a punishment, it’s what we do when we don’t care anymore. It’s where we send those we can’t be bothered to deal with, because that’ll just mess up the system. Your job’s to keep them from seeing daylight again, and that is all. End of story.” (279)

Carl Hiaasen. Squeeze Me. Ebook download from TPL. USA: Borzoi Books/Alfred A. Knopf, 2020.

Hiaasen’s best ever romp through Florida’s fountain of youth culture! Hilarious, unremitting, biting satire sweeps you into and around the Palm Beach season of fundraising charity balls for every known medical syndrome, to culminate notably at the winter White House called Bellicosa. Imagine: a POTUS who keeps a tanning-bed technician on permanent salary; who fulminates recklessly against dusky immigrants; whose Secret Service code name is Mastodon. But first, top socialite and leader of the president’s local fan club, Kiki Pew Fitzsimmons disappears one night. Only a few people besides Angie Armstrong, fearless wildlife wrangler, understand that an enormous Burmese python swallowed Kiki. Her body is later found buried in a construction site; her sons Chance and Chase Cornbright offer a hefty reward to locate the killer, yet Mastodon publicly blames a hapless illegal from Honduras. Mastodon’s inflammatory rhetoric unites the nation in bloodlust.

It’s really Angie’s story. You’ll be out of breath chasing her from one busy job to another, trapping and releasing raccoons, bats, bobcats, and vermin, besides disposing of the ever-encroaching pythons. She also takes an interest in Secret Service agent Paul Ryskamp who is trying to contain rumours about FLOTUS’ romantic activities. Kiki Pew’s dingbat friends, led by Faye Alex Riptoad, fuel the president’s racist rants, but no way is Angie going to allow a perversion of justice. Of all the devious characters Angie meets, who should turn up but the hermit eco-warrior Skink—known for his insertion in a few Hiaasen novels. With the Commander’s Ball fast looming amid increasing snake threats, the Secret Service and local cops have their hands full with security coverage at Bellicosa. Throw in some rare pink pearls, a tanning-bed test pilot, homemade ED remedies, and Mastodon’s pole-dance girlfriend, it’s complicated. Just sit back and read this. We need all the laughter we can get.

Angie

▪ “Have any neighbours complained that their pets have gone missing? Like maybe a Rottweiler,” Angie said, “or a miniature pony?” (46)

▪ “So let me see if I’ve got this right: You’re proposing a straight-up trade—me helping a random border-jumper in exchange for the possibility of sleeping with you.” (293)

▪ “I got a dope new truck,” Angie said. “Camo rims.” (307)

▪ At the end of the day as a wildlife wrangler, all you wanted to do was go home, scrub off the stink, and dress your wounds. (370)

▪ They moved to a place where they could talk, next to a statue that was supposed to be Julius Caesar though it looked more like John Goodman in Raising Arizona. (499)

▪ She said, “Please send someone to get the machete from my truck.” (518)

Mastodon

▪ Up on the TV screen, Mastodon was wearing a vast beet-colored golf shirt that hung on his upper frame like an Orkin termite tent. (208)

▪ “The man’s basically mainlining corn syrup and caffeine.” (342)

▪ “Once I turned on the goddamn internet, no more sleep. President Shitweasel never fails to light my fuel.” (430)

▪ The two seats reserved for his sons were unoccupied; an ice storm had stranded them at an illegal hunting camp in Antarctica, where they been stalking emperor penguins. (508)

Others

▪ Now he understood why Tripp Teabull had hired him to snatch the dead snake: There was a dead rich lady inside of it. (108)

▪ “A hundred bucks says the First Lady vapes like a fiend.” (142)

▪ Ryskamp, holding a finger on his earbud, said, “You can’t weaponize a python.” (359)

▪ “These days I stay painfully informed, watching rat-toothed politicians drag the planet into a smoking death spiral.” (374)

▪ The substance in the baggie was an improvised blend of baking soda and cupcake mix, cut with jock-itch talc from Ryskamp’s personal gym bag.

▪ Faye Alex sat upright and finally saw the snake—it was descending fluidly from the bougainvilleas, arranging itself on the meditation bench one muscular coil after another. (513)

John Hart. The Unwilling. Ebook download from TPL. USA: St. Martin’s Press, 2021.

Abort! Possibly for the first time, I quit before the end of a book. Page 504, can’t take no more. Purportedly a study of the effect of war on an individual and his family members, it was not only grim, it was gratuitously grisly regarding two key characters entirely unassociated with war. The setting was the Vietnam War era and the trials of the French family with three sons; that part I found somewhat prosaic: Young Gibby struggles to understand his older brother Jason’s criminal activities after a dishonourable discharge from the Marines. His father is a cop and his mother is an emotional mess.

And yet the central mystery involves a prisoner on death row, known only as “X” and his outside hired pervert, Reece. Both are psychopaths. X rules the prison (corruption, yes) and enjoys bloody bare knuckle fighting (descriptions, yes) with new arrivals; he never loses, but Jason comes close to beating him. The fight scenes, the autopsy reconstructing the tortured death of a woman, the muddled mind of Gibby—there seems no purpose or ultimate lesson in the violence introduced on all sides. Even the psychology, what there is of it, has a half-baked ring. Uh-uh, I don’t buy it. These people are staying put inside the book covers.

Samples

▪ She studied me with eyes that were as cool and bright as my brother’s. “Are you still my good boy?” (43)

▪ In the car, I thought how strange it was to be born with two brothers, yet be so ignorant of both. (219)

▪ Jason was there too, raking out cash as three bikers surrounded him, two with pistols wedged in their jeans. (233)

▪ Fighting Jason made X want to be more, and X had not wished to be more for a very long time. (319)

▪ French stumbled back, horrified by the extent of his fear and rage, and by the creature that followed behind. (359)

▪ I stood, and looked down, flush with all the things I wanted to say: that my father lived on the fence, and my mother on the wrong side of everything, that trust was not built into the bones of this house. (471)