Is it the plot or the characters or the Molotov malapropisms engineered for maximum blast, a quantum of solecism, that make CLOWN TOWN a classic? All three is the uncrypted answer.
CLOWN TOWN is the ninth and latest of Mick Herron’s Slough House thrillers featuring secret service screw-ups known as Slow Horses, and like its best selling predecessors, demonstrates a brilliant command of both drama and comedy, with a tincture of tragedy and a frequency of farce.
With a prologue not for the squeamish, CLOWN TOWN proceeds with a multi ringed circus of tumbling treason on the tightrope of truth, antic action and the juggling of loyalties.
Current politically correct HR imperatives and past politically incorrect IRA infiltration converge to ignite an explosive course of events, a maelstrom of intrigues, deceits, and canards.
River Cartwright, recovering from a Russian neurotoxin attack is summoned to Oxford in regard to his late grandfather’s library. River had been dead, or next worse thing, nine days in a coma, now resuscitated, resurrected to the romance he shares with Sid Baker, but not yet reinstated officially as a slow horse, not yet rendered physically fit for service.
Diana Taverner, First Desk at The Park, a.k.a His Majesty’s Secret Service, has received a grievance from HR of OHMSS, having apparently caused offence owing to a threatening turn of phrase that has caused the complainant to worry that the she might be planning some kind of genocidal onslaught on the gender fluid.
These two apparently unrelated occurrences collide with a curious reunion of operatives code named Pitchfork, a covert operation during The Troubles in Northern Ireland. Superannuated spooks spurred by inequitable recompense and paltry pensions, spectres from the past who were wound up and pointed, but not recognised or rightly rewarded on their return.
As we have come to expect from Mr. Herron’s superior storytelling, CLOWN TOWN is furnished with a fine flair for character and setting, creating a real page turner with first rate suspense, full of dry humour and moist malevolence.
There is an impish cheekiness afoot, a culmination of homage for the genre and abhorrence at real life personage. Derek Flint rubs shoulders with Dominic Cummings, Liz Truss and Nigel Farage, while a smattering of paperbacks, not an embarrassment, but a private pleasure: Deighton, Ambler, Price, Littell and the le Carres in hardback on a shelf above, next to Dickens, are found in David Cartwright’s library.
The Slough House head, Jackson Lamb, bullshit’s enema number one, chain smoking, fart choking, crotch stroking louche, coiled sponge punninglinguist, leads the charge in CLOWN TOWN, continuing to make a horse’s arse of the powers that be.
What often seems to be too implausible turns out to be all too real as Herron delivers a solid, lively thriller, with loads of acerbic wit and wry unromanticised observation.
That splendid splenetic prose and dialogue is again on show, jeremiads become jaunty, and its recurring mantra, “spies lie, they betray, it’s what they do.”, becomes a haunting refrain.
As in the Slow Horses series so far, CLOWN TOWN succeeds in being thoroughly surprising and exceedingly satisfying, an undeniable contender for the best espionage story you’ll read this year.
CLOWN TOWN by Mick Herron is published by Baskerville through Hachette.
