If you read a better espionage thriller than THE SECRET HOURS published this year, please don’t keep it a secret.
Billed as a stand alone novel, readers will be pleased to discover there are links and echoes to the Slow Horses series in Mick Herron’s latest page turner, THE SECRET HOURS.
Beginning with a tense home invasion, an escape and a thrilling chase, THE SECRET HOURS chews up the minutes with pulse quickening action in a breathtaking twenty-five pages that alone are worth the price of purchase.
And the pace keeps apace, accelerating on with an exhilarating rush of adrenaline as secrets are exhumed, the undiscovered “joe” country explored, the mean streaks of spook street examined.
That such a colourful story could unfold from an inquiry code named Monochrome is illustrative of the irony in Mick Herron’s writing. If the plot is thrilling, so is the writing, full of bon mots and Easter eggs.
Passages of prose are pearls and Herron knows how to string them, his deftness for dialogue runs rings round many tin eared dramatists.
Sustaining a narrative that makes us care what happens next makes the nearly four hundred pages of THE SECRET HOURS an immersive exercise in an intelligent pastime.
Entertaining but not merely escapist, THE SECRET HOURS is a cautionary tale of the social, political and technological pressure eroding individual autonomy.
As one villainous character says, “It’s not about the money. It’s about control, and control means data. If you own the platforms on which people conduct their business, you effectively own that business. And if you own the platforms on which those same people pursue their leisure interests, you effectively own their lives. Any fool with a Twitter feed, a Facebook page or an Instagram account has to all intents and purposes ceded autonomy.”
This is the new world order of Blofeldian world domination, the spectre of the spidery web.
Intelligent and ironic, boasting a splendid intricacy of intrigue and gossamer of concealment, comparisons to Le Carre are irresistible and irrefutable, the similarities are marked, although Herron seems to have a trump card in humour.
THE SECRET HOURS by Mick Herron is published by Baskerville.