Soho
Published September 9, 2025
Reviewed by Barbara Fister
The Slough House team, past and present, are back in the ninth full-length outing for the crew of hapless has-been spies. For those new to the series (where have you been?) Mick Herron has invented an office situated in a rundown building in London where M15 agents who have washed out for one reason or another are sent to spend their days doing pointless busywork under the direction of the gaseous and crude Jackson Lamb, who berates them regularly but would never, ever betray them. Here, the old gang comes together – those who are still alive – to do something counter-intuitive, to save the life of a man who they despise.
The story begins gruesomely, as a blood-thirsty undercover spy from the time of the Troubles in Northern Ireland reflects on a particularly brutal means of punishing enemies. He’s proud of the way he instilled fear, knowing that he had a particular strength: “all he needed was to know he had no limits.” But after a quiet period of safe retirement, believing MI5 would protect him and his secrets after his blood-soaked service, he faces the same violent fate.
It’s not clear at first what this has to do with anything, but as usual the pieces of the jigsaw eventually come together. One of those pieces has to do with a book that doesn’t exist. River Cartwright’s grandfather, a legendary spy, has died and left his library to Oxford University, where a curator discovers one book is missing, a book that has no record of having been published. Though a man helping with the project tells River it was a hollow book that contained something personally embarrassing, a collection of pornography that he kindly disposed of, River is unconvinced. His grandfather held many intelligence service secrets. One must have been hidden in that sham book, but what would it be?
Meanwhile, we’re introduced to a group of old spies, long retired from their active service in Northern Ireland. They haven’t been rewarded for their years of dangerous work, instead living out their retirement years in near-destitution. One of their number decides to solve their money problems by blackmailing Diana Tavener, head of MI5, but she is more than their match and soon they are engaged a very different kind of clandestine work. River Cartwright, who hopes one day to rejoin the service though he is still suffering the neurological effects of a nearly fatal poisoning, begins to piece it all together and puts a plan into motion with his former Slough House colleagues.
Though Herron’s series is often compared to John le Carré’s espionage novels, he’s unique. Yes, he has a similarly cynical view of the British intelligence services, and can at times ignite with a similar incendiary rage at contemporary politics, but he brings his own goofy, even Rabelaisian humor to bear as he throws puzzle pieces into the air. Just one example: a description of a new prime minister who isn’t named but has an uncanny resemblance to the current centrist Labour leader: “His government had hit the ground runny, like a jelly that hadn’t set.”
The narrative is rich with wordplay that requires some attention to untangle, and the action is often slapstick, poking fun at its eccentric characters, but Herron is fully in control of a complex plot and a large cast. There is a remarkable scene that involves nearly the entire ensemble in a choreographed stand-off that should be impossible to follow but makes vivid, gripping sense. Yet, as regular readers know, that wild humor can be unexpectedly paired with tragedy, abrupt and shocking, making even the clowns of Clown Town more complex and touching than they may at first seem.
While Clown Town may not be the best place to start the series, it’s worth going back to the beginning to enjoy all nine books, perhaps catching up as well with related titles and several novellas that exist in the same universe. For those already caught up, this is another delicious and absorbing trip into the Slough House universe, with its back-biting power brokers and its hapless but endearing and ultimately honorable clowns, all rendered with vivid language and razor-sharp wit.