{"id":7236,"date":"2026-01-19T20:36:55","date_gmt":"2026-01-19T10:36:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/veritysparks.com\/?p=7236"},"modified":"2026-01-19T20:36:55","modified_gmt":"2026-01-19T10:36:55","slug":"clown-town","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/veritysparks.com\/?p=7236","title":{"rendered":"CLOWN TOWN"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>What you see when you see a blank page is very much what you hear when you hear white noise; it’s the early shifting into gear of something not ready to happen – an echo of what you feel when you walk past sights the eyes are blind to: bus queues, whitewashed shopfronts, adverts pasted to lamp posts, or a four-storey block on Aldersgate Street in the London borough of Finsbury; where the premises gracing the pavement include a Chinese restaurant with ever-lowered shutters and a faded menu taped to its window; a down-at-heel newsagent’s where pallets of off-brand cola cans block the aisles; and, between the two, a weathered black door with a dusty milk bottle welded to its step, and an air of neglect suggesting that it never opens, never closes.<\/em><\/p>\n

Mick Herron’s readers know immediately where they are; outside Slough House, home to Jackson Lamb and his crew of MI5’s duds and failures. They are known as the ‘slow horses’, and widely regarded in the secret service as a pack of bumbling, incompetent clowns. But they are Lamb’s clowns. Anyone who messes with them, messes with him, too. And for an overweight, out-of-condition, flatulent, nicotine-dependent, down-at-heel functioning alcoholic, he does a good job of dealing out retribution.<\/p>\n

All the books are based on this premise, but so far, it hasn’t got stale.
\nIn this instalment, the loathsome former politician Peter Judd – who must be modelled on Boris Johnson – and First Desk ice-queen Diana Taverner are duelling yet again. The action unspools from one small detail, a missing book in River Cartwright’s grandfather’s library. And that’s all I’m saying. No spoilers.<\/p>\n

My older brother, who loaned me this one, tells me he rates Herron A+ – up there with John le Carre – because the writing, the characterisation, the dialogue, the setting, the back-stories, the plots all dovetail together seamlessly. No hitches or hiccups in the reading experience. Perfect examples of their kind. And with a kind of cliff-hanger at the end, there’s the extra pleasure in knowing that there are more Slow Horses to come.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

What you see when you see a blank page is very much what you hear when you hear white noise; it’s the early shifting into gear of something not ready to happen – an echo of what you feel when … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7236","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/veritysparks.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7236","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/veritysparks.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/veritysparks.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/veritysparks.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/veritysparks.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7236"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/veritysparks.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7236\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7238,"href":"https:\/\/veritysparks.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7236\/revisions\/7238"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/veritysparks.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7236"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/veritysparks.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7236"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/veritysparks.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7236"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}