A.k.a. The reviews I didn’t feel like writing, but hey, I read the books.
Real Tigers & Spook Street
I read the first two books in the Slow Horses series. I got them from my library, which unfortunately only carried translations.
Pro tip: translations suck and avoid them where you can.
They’re not bad translations, but all the whimsy and finesse are lost. I got the rest of the series in its original English, and whether that’s the sole reason I enjoyed the next parts a lot more I don’t know, but I did.
Real Tigers
In this installment, Jackson Lamb’s stoic and dependable right-hand Catherine Standish is kidnapped by a group of people who are not who they seem. The Slow Horses band together to save her in predictable fashion: River is susceptible to poor impulse control because he wants to be the hero, Catherine is calm but passive, Louisa is is distracted by grief, Roddy Ho is a dick and Jackson Lamb is a dick who’s smarter than the rest of them.
It’s fun, it’s cleverly plotted and, at times, a little confusing (it took me a long time to figure out whether Ingrid Tierney outplayed Diana Taverner, or vice versa. Politicians are duplicitous psychopaths and everyone in government is trying to elbow their way to the top. It’s a lot of fun in a cynical way. Herron’s prose is solid and his characters, while over the top, are engaging – despite his inherent idiocy, I have a soft spot for River – and Jackson Lamb is, of course, the GOAT. I am, however, terribly happy he’s not a real person one could potentially meet.
Spook Street
David Cartwright was a bona fide spymaster once upon a time, a person to whom no government secret stayed secret; someone with a lot of fingers in a lot of pies, even past the age of retirement. Now, however, he is slowly succumbing to dementia, which leads to an interesting question: what does one do with someone who can remember a lot of secrets, but not to whom they are supposed to talk? River worries about his grandfather and goes to see him. Hours later, Jackson Lamb is called out to identify his body.
There’s also a subplot-but-not-really about a bombing at a large shopping centre called Westacres (which, c’mon, Herron – either call it Westfield or think of a better cover name), and a mysterious commune in rural France.
It’s a somewhat more sombre book than its predecessor, but a fun read too. It looks into River and his grandfather’s background a bit more, which was satisfying, but I wasn’t entirely sure whether I bought into the militant-commune-plotline; it seemed a little contrived and cheap, and that’s not something I’m used to from this author.
Murder Most Actual (Alexis Hall)
My favourite thing as of late is mentally inserting Murderbot into books I don’t like. For Murder Most Actual I enjoyed the thought of Jackson Lamb, preferably as played by Gary Oldman, walking into the dratted castle and solving the whole thing in a couple of seconds, but leaning back just to watch the idiots off themselves.
Hanna and Liza are a married couple struggling in their relationship. They decide to take a few days off and stay in a Scottish castle to relax and hopefully work on their relationship. Unfortunately, as things are wont to go in books, it doesn’t take long for the first body to pop up.
I’m not averse to a locked room mystery and I loved the other Alexis Hall books I’ve read, so I was really looking forward to this one. And I HATED it. I really did. The characters were annoying, I didn’t care if they lived or died. Liza being a podcaster made her instantly extra annoying. I rolled my eyes when the castle became unreachable because snow or a storm or a broken bridge or whatever dumb shit.
Hall can write. I particularly loved Ten Things That Never Happened, for two reasons: it was both delightfully snarky and witty, and yet it had heart. I cared about the characters. The only emotion these two managed to evoke here was a great degree of ennui and loathing. The witticisms that I loved so much about the other of Hall’s books that I read were absent here.
It feels unfair to give this book a one star review, because I abjectly dislike cozy mysteries and for all I know this book is a prime example of a genre that I simply don’t click with. But man, was I disappointed in this one.
