Dead Lions

Untraceable Poison and a Sleeper Cell of Spooks

Dead Lions by Mick Herron is the second of the Slough House novels and won the CWA Gold Dagger for the best crime novel of the year in 2013.

Deadbeat spies and deadpan prose. Deadly all-round, really.

‘He’d kill me. And he could do it, too. He’s killed people before.’

‘That’s what he wants you to think,’ River said.

‘You’re saying he hasn’t?’

‘I’m saying he’s not allowed to kill staff. Health and safety.”

Dead Lions by Mick Herron

Synopsis

When a long-retired cold war agent, Dickie Bow, is found dead on a coach to Oxford, Jackson Lamb decides he should investigate. Lamb and his team uncover the trail of a Russian spy. He had made his way from London to an obscure village in the Cotswolds, nestled beside an abandoned American airbase and then disappeared back to Moscow via Gatwick airport.

At the same time, an ambitious MI5 operative clad in a pinstripe suit has seconded two of Lamb’s staff to chaperone Arkady Pashkin. Pashkin, one of Russia’s wealthiest oligarchs, could be destined for the Kremlin. Here is a man the security services would love to have in their pocket.

But then one of the chaperones dies whilst riding his bicycle blind drunk. At first, it looked like an accident, but the woman driving the car had some dubious friends in her past.

An unlikely double assassination or unrelated tragedies?

Review

Mick Herron has taken a clever scenario — an office where MI5 shunts its inept or embarrassing operatives — and spun it around to create a critically acclaimed series of novels. Dead Lions won the 2013 Crime Writers Association Gold Dagger Award.

Herron’s Dead Lions is full of twists, dead ends, false starts and secret deals. He will keep you intrigued right to the very end as, in fits and starts, you start to grasp what is happening. The intricate plot may stretch credibility, but this is a work of fiction, so that isn’t something to get too upset about.

Herron portrays people and events impeccably. One of Slough House’s misfits is “well past anal… his socks are tagged left and right”, and he describes a protest march as a “rainbow coalition of the pissed off”.

Retailers have labelled books in the series “Jackson Lamb Thrillers” after Herron’s main protagonist, which is unfair to Herron’s cast of failed spooks. Each has their own story and reason for being confined to MI5’s backwater. Herron combines their foibles with a sound understanding of dysfunctional bureaucracy. He builds a storyline in which the conflicts within the organisation are almost as dangerous as those outside it.

But, for me, best of all is Herron’s onslaught of deadpan humour. Lamb sets the benchmark in politically incorrect comments, making Donald Trump look featherweight. The irony is dry, dark and bleakly entertaining, though you might have to be British to get it. Just don’t mistake this for a comedy, and beware of getting too attached to the characters; Herron has a nasty habit of killing them off.

Excerpt

Shirley Dander tapped a pencil uselessly against her reluctant monitor, then put it down. As it hit the desk, she made a plosive noise with her lips.

‘…What?’

‘What’s “wouldn’t dare” supposed to mean?’ she said.

‘I don’t follow.’

‘When I asked if you were chatting me up. You said you wouldn’t dare.’

Marcus Longridge said, ‘I heard the story.’

That figured, she thought. Everyone had heard the story.

Shirley Dander was five two; brown eyes, olive skin, and a full mouth she didn’t smile with much. Broad in the shoulder and wide in the hip, she favoured black: black jeans, black tops, black trainers. Once, in her hearing, it had been suggested she had the sex appeal of a traffic bollard, a comment delivered by a notorious sexual incompetent. On the day she was assigned to Slough House she’d had a buzz cut she’d refreshed every week since.

That she had inspired obsession was beyond doubt: specifically, a forth-desk Comms operative at Regent’s Park, who had pursued her with a diligence that took no heed of the fact that she was in a relationship. He’d taken to leaving notes on her desk; to calling her lover’s flat at all hours. Given his job he had no trouble making these calls untraceable. Given hers, she had no trouble tracing them.

There were protocols in place, of course; a grievance procedure which involved detailing ’inappropriate behaviours’ and evidencing ‘disrespectful attitudes’; guidelines which carried little weight with staff who’d spent a minimum of eight weeks on assault training as part of their probation. After a night in which he had called six times, he’d approached her in the canteen to ask how she had slept, and Shirley had decked him with one clean punch.

She might have got away with this if she hadn’t hauled him to his feet and decked him again with a second.

Issues, was the verdict from HR. It was clear that Shirley Dander had issues.

Dead Lions by Mick Herron