Slow Horses

Content Warning: This section of the guide describes portrayals of racist and sexist attitudes and language and makes reference to extremist terrorist activity, kidnapping, threat, violence, violent death, death by suicide, and gory detail.

“Slough House, then—a name which appears on no official documentation, nameplate or headed notepaper; no utility bill or deed of leasehold; no business card or phone book or estate agent’s listing; which is not this building’s name at all, in any but the most colloquial of senses—is evidently run from the top down, though judging by the uniformly miserable décor, the hierarchy is of a restricted character. You’re either at the top or you’re not. And only Jackson Lamb is at the top.”

This is indicative of the way in which the author both upholds the conventions of the spy thriller and upends them. Herron’s extended metaphor here is that Slough House is “off the books,” as it were, a secret place full of secrets, as is fitting for an office full of spies. Moreover, this office is full of washed-up spies with their own embarrassing secrets too. It is a place where Lamb rules with impunity. But, as with most novels of the genre, everything is not as it initially appears. One of the clues to this is this passage, which hints at the exploitable deniability of Slough House as an undocumented part of the Service.

“He’d heard Taverner was desperate to alter the rules of the game; not so much change the pieces on the board as throw the board away and design a new one.”

River compares the work of espionage to a game, a common trope in spy thrillers. Unbeknownst to him, he is one of Taverner’s pawns in her current game. Her attempt to “alter the rules of the game” ends in the deaths of agents and the betrayal of Slough House. The cynical strategic treatment of people as “pieces” her character will reveal is foreshadowed here.