Book Report: The Secret Hours

8. Mick Herron, The Secret Hours (2023) (5/28/24)

I suppose I should have read the eight "Slow Horses" books before I read this one, but it was billed as a stand-alone, and I wasn't feeling like getting bogged down in yet another series (the first volume of which I've read, and I've seen the three TV seasons based on the series). As it turns out—and I suppose this is a spoiler, but I can't imagine anyone who cares actually reading this report—this book provides something of a backstory to a key Slow Horses character. Which one might pick up on early on if one is paying attention to all the cigarette smoking, or at least, as I did, later (on the last page), when this character mentions a certain murder. 

But no matter: one does not need to have read the Slow Horses for this book to be enjoyable. It provides a deliciously cynical view of British intelligence, as a go-nowhere investigative panel is convened and proceeds to hear utterly worthless testimony—until one day a provocative file mysteriously appears in a panel member's shopping cart, and suddenly they do have something to investigate. 

The book's action begins with a man being chased in the dead of night through country lanes in Devon, then shifts to present-day London, and finally to "Berlin, Then"—"then" being shortly after the Wall fell, and a young woman arrives to keep an eye on a house of "spooks" and report back to HQ in London. That becomes the real story, told in alternating fashion: the London hearing room, and then live action in Berlin. It's a pleasing device. And a lively story (because of course that chased man never entirely disappears).

Here's a passage I flagged, as our witness is given her brief by a higher-up in MI5:

     "Miles isn't in charge of the whole shebang [in Berlin], however much he likes to act like he is, but he's the one who knows the streets, and he's done the hard time staring at the Wall from the opposite side. So he should know what's what."
     "And you want me to observe him."
     "Observe . . . Yes. I want you to observe him."
     "You think he's . . . turned?"
     Turned was the word you heard, in the movies, on TV. "Turned" was when you stopped being whoever you were and started being someone else, unless it was when you stopped pretending to be someone else, and went back to being who you were. It occurred to her even as she was saying the word that they could have been discussing Miles's sexuality as much as his loyalty. If you were going to be turned, Berlin was very much the place where this might happen. She'd read enough about the city, and heard from friends for whom it was a clubbers' paradise, to know that much.
     But Cartwright said, "Let's not get ahead of ourselves."
     "No, I understand."
     "You're there to observe," he repeated.

And although I enjoyed the writing and the pacing and the general high energy, I think now it's time for something quieter. Or at least a little less cynical.