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. Dead Lions returns the reader to Slough House, a few months after the essentially sidelined crew there had enjoyed a rare taste of actual spying adventure and success, as chronicled in Slow Horses. The finest new crime series this millennium - Mail on Sunday. Dickie Bow was a talented streetwalker once, good at following people and bringing home their secrets. The Jackson Lamb novels in order: Slow Horses, Dead Lions, Real Tigers, Spook Street.
‘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. For my money, though, the highlight has got to be Molly Doran (a long running character) to whom absolutely no justice was done on the screen and Shirley Dander who the tv turned from “all the sex appeal of a traffic bollard” into a 21st century americanised (boring and entirely unbelievable) ideal of a pretty but kick-ass girlie heroine (take liberties with the stories, guys, but leave my favourite characters alone!!!) So, whether you’ve seen the show first or not, listen to the book - the Sean Barrett reading if you have a choice - you’ll meet new friends and have a great time.*Now a major TV series starring Gary Oldman* The story while superficially similar is different enough from the teleplay to be worth experiencing both.
The original story here (if you’ve watched TV first) is far tighter, the Slow Horses far more an ensemble group (all are living breathing highly individual characters, each flawed in a different style, with unique implications). I re-listened to this immediately after watching the new TV treatment of it (desperately disappointing casting in season 2 after the excellent work in all respects of bringing book 1 to the screen).
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