Once again, Herron gives the reader a fast-paced spy novel of a very different sort. Meanwhile, two of Lamb’s slow horses are seconded by River’s nemesis at Regent’s Park, James (Spider) Webb, for “babysitting” duty in Russian oil talks. But the recent death, on a bus, of Cold War spy, Dickie Bow has Jackson Lamb looking closer, and soon his smartest young spy, River Cartwright is in place in a sleepy Cotswolds village trying to track down a Russian agent. Ordinarily, there are no ops from Slough House: the Slow Horses can’t be trusted with anything that matters. They had a bit of unexpected action a few months ago, so there are empty desks and a few new faces. Slough House doesn’t have a big staff, currently just seven under the control of Jackson Lamb. There they are set such tedious, mind-numbing tasks it’s hoped they will be fed-up enough to quit. Slough House is where the spook screw-ups from MI5 who, for some reason or other, can’t be sacked, are sent. 'The spycraft of le Carre refracted through the blackly comic vision of Joseph Heller's Catch-22' Financial Times Read More Read Lessĭead Lions is the second novel in the Slough House series by British author, Mick Herron. 'Mick Herron is an incredible writer' Mark Billingham Once a spook, always a spook, and even being dead doesn't mean you can't uncover secrets.ĭickie Bow might have tailed his last target, but Lamb and his crew of no-hopers are about to go live. On Dickie's phone Lamb finds the last message he ever left, which hints that an old-time Moscow-style op is being run in the Intelligence Service's back-yard. But he's not an obvious target for assassination in the here and now. He was in Berlin with Lamb, back in the day. Dickie Bow was a talented streetwalker once, good at following people and bringing home their secrets. 'The new king of the spy thriller' Mail on Sundayįrom the Intelligence Service purgatory that is Slough House, where disgraced spies are sent to see out the dregs of their careers, Jackson Lamb is on his way to Oxford, where a former spook has turned up dead on a bus. *Now a major TV series starring Gary Oldman*

Dead Lions is the second book in the Sunday Times bestselling, award-winning, Slough House series, featuring Mick Herron's much loved band of disgraced spies, led by Jackson Lamb, ' the most fascinating and irresistible thriller series hero to emerge since Jack Reacher' (Sunday Times)

Slow horses and dead lions