The Economist - USA (2019-08-17)

64 TheEconomistAugust 17th 2019

1

A

seriesofcomicthrillersaboutfailed

spiesmayseemanunlikelysourceof

insightintomodernBritain.And,infact,

MickHerron’ssixnovelsabouta fictitious

dumping-groundforerrantBritishagents

called Slough House do not aspire to docu-

mentary realism. “Authenticity is not what

I’m seeking,” the author says, in a museum

café near his home in Oxford. “Plausibility

and broad-stroke reality is what I’m after.”

Yet, in their gleefully shocking way, his

books reflect the trajectory of the nation.

Their jaundiced characters are the anti-

heroes Brexit-era Britain deserves.

None of Mr Herron’s growing band of

devotees can, for instance, have failed to

notice that this reality includes a portrait—

sustained across the series—of a ruthlessly

ambitious politician named Peter Judd.

“Public buffoon and private velociraptor”,

the jovial, Latin-spouting Judd—“a loose

cannon with a floppy haircut and a bicy-

cle”—weaves through the vicissitudes of

public life. “Straddling the gap between

media-whore and political beast”, he

charms, bluffs and schemes his way to-

wards the peaks of power. Meanwhile, “be-

lowthesurfacelay atemperthatcould

scorch chrome”.

In the first book, “Slow Horses” (pub-

lished in 2010), a journalist sketches out a

path to Downing Street for Judd that relies

on nativism, since “the decent people of

this country are sick to death of being held

hostage by mad liberals in Brussels.” Mr

Herron insists that Judd “was created as a

composite character made up of all the

worst possible attributes that a politician

could have.” He does not write romans à clef,

and, indeed, politicians are not his stories’

focus. They barge in only to aggravate the

lower-level debacles that punctuate rou-

tine in the “administrative oubliette” of

squalid, shambolic Slough House.

Yet few contemporary British writers

possess keener antennae for the back-

ground hum of public affairs. Drily, Mr

Herron notes that “the political chaos

we’ve entered is playing nicely into the

books I’ve written.” In the latest, the just-

published“JoeCountry”,Diana Taverner—

theMachiavellianchiefofMr Herron’s fic-

tionalisedversionofmi5, Britain’s domes-

tic security service—considers: “If you

wantyourenemytofail,give him some-

thingimportanttodo.”This strategy, the

readerlearns,isknown“for obscure his-

toricalreasons”as“TheBoris”.

Fromtheiroriginsa century ago, in the

era of John Buchan and Somerset

Maugham,Britishspynovels have held up

a crackedand smudged mirror to their

times.Infiction,thetwilitintrigues of Her

Majesty’ssecretserviceshave tracked the

courseofimperialdecline,the intelligence

triumphs of the second world war and the

ambiguous stalemate of the cold war. Since

that struggle’s end, an assorted cast of

jihadists, rogue states and crooked multi-

nationals have assumed the adversary’s

role in espionage fiction.

Gentlemen and players

In Mr Herron’s work, by contrast, the most

vicious enemies lurk within—among col-

leagues, bosses, former allies, even family.

“Essentially, I’m writing office politics,” he

says. Manda Scott, author most recently of

“A Treachery of Spies”, notes that the inter-

necine savagery of Mr Herron’s security

agencies finally buries the espionage-fic-

tion mythof “decentgentlemen—public

Espionagefiction

Spieslikeus

OXFORD

MickHerron’snovelsarea satiricalchronicleofa Britainillateaseinthe2010s

Joe Country. By Mick Herron.Soho Crime;

360 pages; $26.95. John Murray; £14.99

Books & arts

65 Cold-warsummitry

66 MusicandmoralsinAmerica

66 Téa Obreht’s magical Western

Also in this section

Correction:In “Thinking outside the box” (August

3rd) we said that the Bauhaus’s second director was

Adolf Meyer. In fact it was Hannes Meyer. And

Marianne (not Maria) Brandt designed the

tea-infuser pictured in the article.