Clown Town - Mick Herron

Mick Herron often bases his Slough House stories on some form of real-world political and intelligence activity. Not just for realism but partly because it's hard to make something up for satire when the real world these days is going to come up with something even more absurd and unbelievable than you can make up. Besides, the plot and its believability aren't really the point of the books, or at least not for me, but rather just a framework to hang his characters, the humour and style on. (A lot of which I'm sure must be lost in the hit TV series adaptations).

Sometimes the real world can be too awful to satirise and the prologue for Herron's latest, Clown Town is horribly gruesome, but a reminder - we shall see - that there is a price to be paid for acts of bad faith and unknown consequences down the line. For a while at least, there doesn't appear to be anything particularly troublesome arising out of the historic prologue, and instead in the novel proper we find Lambs crew picking up the pieces after the last book in a couple of threads, none of which seem initially promising. One involves Lamb somewhat meekly taking on a favour for Diana Taverner; a second involves her being obliged to stick her neck out for Peter Judd; another is Cartwright recovering from a Novichok incident, hoping to return to 'duty' and being asked to help recover a missing book from his late grandfather's library.

Even all of the however is leavened considerably by Mick Herron's humour, the banter between the misfits of the Intelligence Service in Slough House, the characters we know and love. They are all brilliantly characterised and satirised, as are a few current trends and issues. Gradually however, Clown Town takes a dark turn that has a basis in a fairly controversial incident in the past, "one of the messier stories from our recent history", one that still is a continual source of speculation and denial related to the use of what would be considered a fairly rogue agent used by the intelligence services infiltration into the IRA. The codename is here is Pitchfork, but certainly in Northern Ireland, it's more a piece of domestic cutlery that comes to mind.

Pitchfork's handlers, as you might imagine, would have seen their share of horrors, enough to make you somewhat resentful of how you have been treated by the Park. There are a lot of embittered old agents on Spook Street, but this now inactive unit have come up with the not so bright idea of seeking some kind of unofficial recompense for what they have been put through. As a plot it's not the most convoluted ...well, at least not that much for a game of spies with personal motivations mixed with professional and career concerns, as well as a sense of duty. Not to mention blackmail and "covering up dark mischief" and it all plays into the hands of First Desk Diana Taverner. So complicated enough then.

That however only takes us so far in Clown Town - and that is entertaining enough to be up to the very high standard we expect from this author - but the fall-out from this one is considerable, and there's plenty of time following the 'resolution' to address outstanding matters (if I can put it as simply as that without introducing any spoilers). What I will say is that it's taken me the best part of a year since publication to get around to reading and reviewing this latest book in the series, mainly as I was concerned - what with the popularity of the TV series that I haven't seen - that Herron might start to get tired of Slough House and the ideas might dry up. I'm happy to report that this is very far from the reality.

Part of the reason I refuse to engage with the TV series is that I don't want my mental image of the characters distorted by the casting (and I certainly don't want to see Gary Oldman as Lamb), but mainly that the satirical elements of the plot and the razor sharp dialogue are only part of the equation that makes the series great. The real key to it is not even - and I don't say this lightly - the characters either. We know their traits and flaws are well established and less likely to spring surprises or move on from what we know of them. For me personally, it's Herron's writing, manner, wit and originality of his observations that cannot possibly be replicated in another medium.

It's hard to make side-by-side comparisons and it's all subjective, but I felt that Herron hit his stride with Real Tigers, and I think Clown Town might be the best work since then (I may have said the same about several others along the way). It's not just the plot here, it's not just the surprises and shock casualties - there are always those in the Slough House books - but it's just the wonderful flow, the perfect imagery, the memorable lines and deadpan dialogue brimming with wit and invention. There is scarcely a page where you don't find a turn of phrase or colourful image to admire. There is plenty of life in the book series yet then - real-life politics will ensure there is no shortage of material for that - but the seismic shake-ups that takes place over the course of Clown Town are such that it leaves you with no certainty of what the future holds for Slough House.

Reading notes: Clown Town by Mick Herron, Book 9 of the Slough House series (with a few additional spin off pieces) was first published in September 2025. It's also available in Kindle and in paperback. I read a Kindle version. Based on some of the events here, I do wonder how much influence the TV series has had on Herron's writing. There's certainly no lessening of the quality of the writing, so maybe but the longer the series runs, the higher the stakes become - or perhaps the current state of the political climate worldwide demands a more extreme response.