Slough House (novel series)
Slough House is a series of spy novels by the British Author Mick Herron. He began writing the first volume, Slow Horses, in 2008, and published it in 2010.

The series follows River Cartwright and his coworkers, a  group of humiliated MI5 agents, who have been relegated to pushing paper in a desk job. They serve under a crude aging Cold War era agent, Jackson Lamb, and will do anything to get back into the game.

Inspiration and writing
Genre
Herron has been referenced as having a broad range of influences from John le Carré, Len Deighton, Charles Dickens to Reginald Hill and P. G. Wodehouse. Herron began reading le Carré at the age of 14 and stated he "gave me permission to become a writer ... He showed me you could invent an entire world, invent its language too." Herron stated that le Carré's A Perfect Spy, was the only "masterpiece" by one his influences that he was able to read as a newly released publication.

Herron has stated that one of the series' protagonists Jackson Lamb, was influenced by Reginald Hill's Andy Dalziel. While Herron has denied intentionally making Lamb's name a homage to le Carré, he has acknowledged he certainly read the character's initials "J. Lamb" in Smiley's People.

While many of England's famous espionage writers like le Carré and Ian Fleming had previously been members of the secret service, Herron has had no militiary or intelligence experience. When speaking about his previous experience working in a legal department of an employment research centre, Herron said "People say write what you know... So I wrote about people who are failures."

Derived works
TV series
Slow Horses is a British spy thriller television series based on the Slough House series of novels. The series premiered on Apple TV+ on 1 April 2022. The second series, Dead Lions, premiered on 2 December 2022. In June 2022, the series was renewed for a third and fourth series. The third series premiered on 29 November 2023. The fourth series is set to premiere on 4 September 2024. In January 2024, it was renewed for a fifth series, which will be based on the fifth book in the series, London Rules.

References

Category:British spy novels
Category:Novels set in London
Category:MI5 in fiction
Category:Book franchises
Category:Book series introduced in 2010