![]() ![]() Agent: Juliet Burton, Juliet Burton Literary Agency (U.K. Book 2: Dead lions The disgruntled agents of Slough House are called into action to protect a visiting Russian oligarch whom MI5 hopes to recruit to British. The novel is equally noteworthy for its often lyrical prose. ![]() The complex plot drags a bit in the middle, as Herron gets quite a number of balls in the air, but once he does, the narrative picks up real steam and becomes genuinely thrilling. Meanwhile, two Slough House operatives are seconded to the job of protecting a Russian billionaire, Arkady Pashkin, in London for a nebulous meeting. But the head of Slough House, the irascible Jackson Lamb, is convinced Dickie Bow was murdered. To Jackson Lamb, the thoroughly unlikable head of Slough House (“the spooks’ equivalent of Devil’s Island,” to which disgraced or out-of-favor British spies are exiled), Bow’s death plus a cryptic, unsent text keyed into his cellphone (the single word “cicadas”) suggest Russian intrigue, perhaps tied to a long-dormant, possibly mythical, spy named Alexander Popov. While two agents are dispatched on that babysitting job, though, an old Cold War-era spy named Dickie Bow is found dead, ostensibly of a heart attack, on a bus outside of Oxford, far from his usual haunts. In the opening chapter of Herron’s funny, clever sequel to 2010’s Slow Horses (2010), low-level British spy, Dickie Bow, dies on a bus to Oxford of apparently natural causes. ![]()
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