Clown Town by Mick Herron – reviewed by Chris Connor
There has been no shortage of great espionage novelists from Britain over the years, from the likes of Graham Greene, Ian Fleming and Len Deighton to John le Carré, who, even five years after his death, leaves an indelible footprint on the genre. The most obvious heir apparent to the titans mentioned above has come in the shape of Mick Herron, best known for his Slough House series of novels, brought to life to huge acclaim with Apple TV’s Slow Horses.
The success of the Gary Oldman and Kristin Scott Thomas-led series has seen an added set of interest for Herron and his works. The ninth series in the main Slough House series, Clown Town, has generated a feverish sense of anticipation. As the first main series title to be published since the show’s premiere in 2022, Herron has a whole new audience to cater to. Fans can rest assured that it is as twisty as we have come to expect with Jackson Lamb delivering his iconic putdowns and one-liners and Herron continuing to blend humour, action, suspense, and no shortage of surprises.
The Slow Horses are once again drawn into the machinations of Regent’s Park, the home of MI5 in Herron’s brilliantly realised world. We are initially left with a series of happenstances that appear unconnected. What does an item missing from the late David Cartwright’s library have to do with The Brain’s Trust, a team of spooks from years gone by, involved somehow with The Troubles? Does this link to an offer away from Slough House for Louisa Guy? Diana Taverner is once again a brilliant foil for Lamb, carrying on her own schemes that naturally come back to bite Slough House.
While Clown Town has its share of action as we’ve come to expect from Herron, it is more introspective than some of the previous Slough House novels, much of the action stemming from River Cartwright’s initial visit to his grandfather’s library in Oxford, setting the wheels in motion. Cartwright, recovering from his ordeal in the previous books, is beginning to feel like his life is on the up and he might finally be clearing a path back into Taverner’s good books and the park. Safe to say this doesn’t last.
This has all the ingredients fans have come to love across the eight previous novels and a series of novellas, spin-off novels and loosely connected stories. After more than 15 years of writing within this universe, Herron continues to come up with new ways to challenge readers' expectations and provide new scenarios for our would-be heroes to fall into. As has been the case with his previous books, Herron is on the pulse both culturally and politically, with nods to real-world events, particularly in the UK and a few neat references to the show and other writers in the genre.
The Secret Hours, Herron’s previous novel, delved into Jackson Lamb’s past for the first time in substantial detail and has been among the best-received works in Herron’s career to date. Following such acclaimed material, clearly hasn’t flummoxed him, and Clown Town is decidedly its own beast, one that will no doubt eventually get the Apple treatment in the next 3-4 years. The culmination of this novel provides a series of questions for where the series might go next, indicating Herron is far from done with Lamb and his joes. How long the series goes on for remains to be seen, but we should enjoy it while we can, with Herron continuing to show why he is seen as Britain’s premier spy author.
