I re-discovered author Mick Herron after the success of his recent television adaptations: “Slow Horses,” a spy series starring Gary Oldman and many more stellar actors, and “Down Cemetery Road,” a private investigator mystery with Emma Thompson and Ruth Wilson.
Herron has been writing for a long time, 23 years, and written 21 books. I was surprised to learn he wrote his first book, “Down Cemetery Road” in 2003. It was a struggle to get published, and he worked as a sub-editor and in legal research in London for years.
He has a degree in English literature from Oxford and still lives there. He claims he learned early on that being published does not immediately lead to reviews and acclaim, though he has won many awards and is now a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature.
His books may seem like action/adventure thrillers, but they are very literary, with lots of characters dealing with grief, guilt, frustration and failure; and they are beautifully written.
Some of my favorites:
“Down Cemetery Road” — Private investigator Zoe Boehm and her husband Joe run a struggling PI business in Oxford, usually dealing with cheating spouses, insurance fraud, etc. Then Sarah Tucker visits them because a house blew up in her neighborhood, suspiciously (though it was claimed to be a gas explosion). There was an injured child in the hospital, who then disappeared without a trace. Sarah didn’t know the family, but could not give up on the missing child. Sarah, Zoe and Joe end up in dire danger themselves. Zoe’s brilliance and endurance combined with Sarah’s tenacity make an unbeatable combination. This is the first of four books.
I just finished the riveting second in the series, “The Last Voice You Hear.”
Zoe Boehm is determined to keep a low profile for a while, but becomes caught up with two cases: a middle aged lonely woman who fell in front of a train. Then a young boy falls from the top of a London Tower block.
She follows some tenuous threads and comes across another lonely woman who was found dead from hypothermia after falling into a steep ditch. Someone seems to be following Zoe, and she cannot figure out who or why.
The threads of clues knit together very slowly, and then … suddenly … BAM. Zoe is in extreme circumstances. There is only one place she can go for help, her friend Sarah’s home out in the country.
The Slow Horses series:
The first of nine books is “Slow Horses,” where we are introduced to the misfits, eccentrics and bumbling spies who work out of Slough House in London. They might have messed up a case, failed a psych evaluation or offended someone in power.
We meet the head of the unit, the lax and lazy Jackson Lamb (played by Gary Oldman in the TV series), his second in command Catherine Standish, and the minions: River Cartwright, Roddy Ho and Molly Doran. To give you an idea of Herron’s writing: “Lamb hauled himself upright with the effort another man might have used to land a marlin.” While the TV series is good, you really get the best effect reading the books.
