Novels No. 89

 

Mick Herron. Clown Town. USA: Soho Press, Inc., 2025.

Great excitement here for the new, 9^th Slough House novel! It’s been awhile since Bad Actors (Library Limelights No. 283), so I appreciate the roving tour of the decrepit office building to see the usual suspects. Shirley is as belligerent as ever, Roddy sports a tattoo, Louisa contemplates a real job offer, more recent incomer Ashley Khan is on the self-pity train, and naturally, Catherine Standish holds it all together. River is recovering from near-fatal poisoning, arranging for grandfather David’s library to be catalogued; lo and behold, his girlfriend Sid Baker is back in good form after a long coma (since the first book?!). Regent Park’s (MI5) First Desk Diana Taverner is already surreptitiously requesting a favour from Lamb. And a quartet of retired spooks led by “CC” have acquired ammunition—once hidden by David Cartwright at the height of his career—in order to blackmail Regent’s Park (fools, they).

Oh yes, chaos is about to erupt as Taverner sets her private schemes in motion, at a time when a new government takes over in Britain. Slimy former politician Peter Judd is putting a squeeze on her; Diana bargains with Sid to stop the blackmail to save River’s career; Lamb sets Louisa to find out what River is up to; Sid disappears with the quartet; CC gets a meeting with Diana; Standish endorses a rescue outing by the slow horses. Echoes of past ops like Pitchfork and Waterproof are heard; the ghosts of Min, Marcus, Coe, and Emma Flyte drift momentarily here and there. Did we know Herron discovered a Spook College somewhere in Oxford?

Herron easily transitions from street slang to the poetic, from comedy to insidious social commentary. Is it possible this is the best Slough House book ever? Seems like it as you desperately try to keep up with their manic action. Because every character is compelling, making you care. This addictive series is further enhanced by the brilliant AppleTV episodes that follow, more or less, the order of the books. Seventh heaven for crime fiction fans.

Gems

▪ When Emma died, she’d been wearing Louisa’s coat, and Louisa had never quite rid herself of the notion that the two facts were connected. (71)

▪ “If it was just one of us,” CC said, “a lone wolf, yes, they might try to bury their mess. But four of us? Our ages? They’d be mad to try. It would make a worse stink than what they’re trying to keep under wraps.” (87)

▪ Old spies can grow ridiculous. Old spies aren’t much better than clowns. (127)

▪ He laughed. Diana Taverner telling him not to overthink was like Liz Truss suggesting someone apologise. (140)

▪ River stared at the jottings on his palm, committing them to memory in case he washed his hands by accident. (149)

▪ “Did you really just threaten First Desk?” (159)

▪ “Me, gone? You’re forgetting who you’re talking to. There’s a reason I’m First Desk while you’re still working the bins.” (247)

Lamb-isms

▪ “You look like you found a condom in your cornflakes, Diana. You going to tell me about it or just piss off back to the Park?” (31)

▪ “She implied I looked fat,” said Lamb. “This caused me to feel unsafe.” (54)

▪ “Tell him to undo his seatbelt and head for the nearest concrete wall at eighty-five.” (154)

▪ “And that was a brainstorm, was it? If brains were actual weather, none of you’d get wet.” (193)

▪ “You’ve got a monkey like Judd on your back, you don’t feed it bananas. You find a flamethrower.” (255)

Michael Malone. Uncivil Seasons. TPL download. USA: Sourcebooks, Inc., 1983.

We’re in small town North Carolina where generations of interbred Dollards and Cadmeans comprise the upper level of social order. Other people spend their days pleasing or appeasing their class superiors. Briggs Cadmean owns C&W Textiles, the dominant industry; his extensive family includes a lovely daughter with the same name. Our protagonist Justin (“Jay”) Savile’s solicitous mother Peggy is not the only hilarious character in the novel. Since Jay is one of two town detectives (such a disappointment to his parents), he and his colleague Cuddy Mangum are working on who killed Cloris Dollard—a middle-aged pillar of the community with no enemies—wife of state senator Rowell Dollard, Jay’s maternal uncle. Cuddy is from the other side of town where petty criminals, the Pope boys—Preston, Graham, and Dickey—are persons of interest. In addition, jewellery and other valuables are missing. Cloris’s first husband, Bainton Ames, died years ago in a somewhat suspicious drowning.

The large cast of characters ranges among belligerent or pathetic ex-wives, pontificating elders, sly businessmen, not-so-secret adulterers, a homeless schizophrenic, and such-like. Then there’s Joanna Cadmean, the mystic whose gift helped the police solve many past cases. Author Malone trolls the wealthy uppah classes and their cover-ups of misbehaviour. No wonder Justin drinks. On the one hand, you will laugh out loud. Funniest ever dialogue/banter between Cuddy and Jay. On the other hand, author Malone deeply portrays Justin’s struggles against the family expectations of him. Attempting to nail the killer gives him satisfactory purpose, but places him in danger.

Whether the killer is discovered seems almost irrelevant, Justin’s pursuit is so engrossing—and so annoying to family members. Purpose and sensitivity sustain him in a very complicated, self-serving web of power. Well done, Michael Malone.

Scraps  ... Because this was a download and I was in the midst of travel, the quotes were awkwardly, erratically collected.

▪ I forgot things when I drank. What I forgot first was how frightened my Dollard relatives were that I would start drinking again. (14)

▪ Captain V.D. Fulcher was happy, because he’d heard that Preston Pope had seven placesettings of the Grand Baroque sterling belonging to the Rowell Dollards, and that told him that Preston Pope had murdered Mrs. Dollard, and that told him the case was closed and that the important people in Hillston would think well of him for letting them forget in a hurry that homicides ever happened in Hillston to important people. (48)

▪ “Your trouble is, you’re too domestic. You got too many towels. Sideboards. Relatives. You ever hear of Philip Marlowe’s mother coming to visit him at the office?” (74)

▪ “Leave all this old mess alone, son. Bainton’s dead and gone. And Cloris left her fool house open to trash and trash got in and killed her.” (114)

▪ “Everybody’s got a little shit on their shoes, son. Everybody. People like us don’t track it into the parlor and wipe it on the rugs.” (114)

▪ He meant me to remember I was a Hillston Dollard, blood kin to men of high degree, and I was bound in a circle of courtesy, and I was closely guarded there. (115)

▪ “You are telling me Mrs. Cadmean plotted her suicide to make it look as if you had murdered her?” (210)