Spook Street

By Mick Herron, Soho Crim, 2017, 336 pages
Reviewed by Tom Vogt

A flash mob of young people is enthusiastically responding to boom-box music in an impromptu dance party. Here’s how members of a certain generation might evaluate that music: It has a good beat, and you can die to it.

The scene definitely isn’t an archived episode of “American Bandstand.” It’s a London blast zone, a mall plaza where a suicide bomber kills 40 innocent people.

That is the opening scene of “Spook Street,” the fourth installment in Mick Herron’s series about British security services. Herron focuses on a subset of the “spook” workforce: agents who have screwed up so badly or have become so bent that they can no longer be trusted in the field. They are exiled to an out-of-the-loop office, Slough House, and tasked with MI5’s version of counting paper clips.

Since Slough is pronounced “slow,” those agents are known as “Slow Horses.”  Still, Herron has based a series of thrillers on these folks, so they are doing something right, a couple of them in particular.

River Cartwright is the focal point for readers, and he is not a screw-up. He has inherited many of the traits of his grandfather, David Cartwright, who was a hero of Britain’s security services during the Cold War. But River’s career was sabotaged, undercut by an ambitious fellow spook who saw Cartwright as an obstacle to his own progress.

The head of the office, Jackson Lamb, is a sloppy, slovenly, shambling slob. But he also is the craftiest, cleverest and most cunning character on Spook Street. He realizes that each of his MI5 washouts still has something to offer: the compulsive gambler who has the makings of an action hero; the alcoholic who is a skilled operator when she has a meaningful assignment; the computer geek who is absolutely clueless when it comes to human relationships but is a gifted hacker. Lamb is able to keep several of these one-trick ponies galloping in the same direction.

Herron has a winning skill of his own. He excels in putting “dead” in deadpan humor. It surfaced in the opening scene, as a mall security guard was figuring out how to handle the dance party. Should he smile? Should he sing along? He wasn’t sure, so: (H)e raised a hand to his mouth to disguise his reaction. This gesture helped shield his teeth, by which he later was identified.

The closing pages featured a gunfight that sent tremors through the old and vulnerable, Herron wrote. But, he continued, it had an upside for the nightlife of the young: Just like in frontier towns, the risk of sudden death was greater, but your chances of getting laid were similarly enhanced.

“Spook Street” is not a comic novel. David Cartwright is slipping deeper into dementia. Officials are wondering what sort of secrets the old spymaster might be blabbing to the postmistress when he walks into town (in his pajamas and slippers) to pick up his mail. 

And boy, does he have secrets. Grampa’s past weaves that mall massacre and River Cartwright’s origins into a story that is, well, kind of spooky. But every few pages you realize it has a good beat, and you can laugh to it.