Mick Herron has been termed by some reviewers as the successor to John le Carré. The authors are indeed linked by an Oxford University degree and by their mastery of spy craft, but Herron's spies are at the bottom of the MI5 heap rather than the top.
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Joe Country is the sixth in Herron's award-winning Slough House/Jackson Lamb series.
Lamb heads up a small group of disgraced MI5 spies, "slow horses", relegated to working in the dilapidated Slough House, "the administrative oubliette of the intelligence service".
Lamb's flatulence, swearing, smoking, drinking, and general anti-PC attitudes, are as far from the refined George Smiley as you could get. "I'm half-lesbian on my mother's side. Or does that count for nothing?", is a choice line.
Lamb, who, according to Herron, was loosely based on Reginald Hill's Andy Dalziel, tells his team, "You lot keep your heads down, do what you're told, and quietly die of boredom, and everyone's happy as an Oxfam worker at a sex party. But start making waves and there are shit storms waiting to happen".
Storms erupt after a senior CIA operative, Frank Harkness, and a group of intelligence mercenaries, enter Britain illegally to mop up the fallout from a senior member of the Royal family's involvement in an out-of-control arms dealers party.
Harkness is also hunted by his son Rivers, who has been wrongly sent to Slough House, having taken the blame for a catastrophic failure by Lady Di Taverner, now 'First Desk' at Regent's Park MI5 headquarters.
Herron beautifully captures the cynical inner machinations of national security and government bureaucracy, which Lady Di manages to surf, sometimes dangerously.
Her visit to a London male dominated club with a former disgraced Cabinet Minister is beautifully written, as are the underlying criticisms of current leadership in Brexit Britain.
The first pages of Joe Country begin with the news that two slow horses will not be returning to the Slough House stable.
Readers will not find out, in another absorbing novel, who dies, or why, until the end of the novel and the revenge ultimately exacted by Lamb.
Ultimately, the flawed group at Slough House can be seen to have more integrity and personal loyalty than their national security and political leaders.
Herron aficionados look forward with anticipation to the projected TV series; who will play Jackson Lamb, given that Warren Clarke, who played Andy Dalziel, died in 2014?
- Joe Country, by Mick Herron. John Murray. $32.95.
- Colin Steele is a Canberra reviewer.
