Clown Town Analysis: More Entertainment with the Misfit Agents

Heads up: this latest Slough House shares the moniker as a rather depressing indoor playground on the capital’s North Circular Road—an environment where sticky toddlers circulate through an infernal apparatus, wailing and even stabbing each other with toy utensils. Adults wait at uncomfortable chairs, enduring horrible coffee and bracing for the end. One look at the dust jacket sent me back to that atmosphere of disarray, boredom, and subtle risk. There are clear parallels, mind. There’s something of the chaotic energy of a kid’s arena in Mick Herron’s narrative universe: lighthearted antics before someone suffers real damage.

A Gripping Start

Nevertheless, reportedly, few incidents in the actual Clown Town would have been caused by someone being restrained so a tire of a 4x4 could be crushed onto their head—that is the attention-grabbing opening with which the book begins this latest instalment. As often, Herron’s plot draws inspiration from historical incidents: the Stakeknife scandal—a situation where it turned out that British intelligence had been protecting a brutally effective IRA enforcer as an informant—is reflected in the narrative of a character, whose trademark method of eliminating during the Troubles involved crushing people’s heads.

Exposing the Truth

Pitchfork’s story was hidden—until it wasn’t. Former associates have reappeared, and figuratively speaking, consequences loom with past actions catching up. Lead character River—family documents we discover contained crucial material about Pitchfork—begins tugging at a clue. Senior intelligence figure, the machiavellian Diana, unveils another of her clever plans and is soon back sparring with the disgraced spies’ crude ringmaster Jackson.

Does the series showing signs of fatigue? Not by my lights.

Widening Appeal

In recent years, Herron’s works about a band of failed operatives has evolved from “well-kept secret” to mainstream recognition. The author has become an true heavyweight of the genre, and with the show’s release Slow Horses, fans now picture their impression of the character once associated with an initial reference to another performer. But the books are still the core offering—as it’s Herron’s line-by-line writing that really makes them stand out. Has there been a more commanding style since the great authors? Or equally in love with the elaborate phrasing? Consider this the initial passage in Herron’s now-traditional slow-burn scene-setting to Slough House:

What meets the eye when you see a blank page is like what you hear when you hear white noise; it’s the early shifting of something yet to occur—a reflection of what you feel when you walk past views the eyes are blind to; lines of waiting people, painted stores, flyers on poles, or a four-storey block on a London road in the district of the neighborhood, where the establishments lining the street include a eatery with ever-lowered shutters and a weather-worn list affixed to the glass; a shabby corner shop where stacks of generic sodas clutter the space; and, adjacent, a timeworn portal with a dusty milk bottle stuck on the doorstep, and an air of neglect suggesting that it is always closed, never closes.

A Unique Hybrid

This metaphorical opening—coupled with a lost text from an veteran agent’s collection acting as a narrative trigger—points toward the author’s self-aware style. Herron’s novels are a unique and compelling blend. The bones of every Slough House novel are those of a traditional thriller: the plot includes antagonists, buried secrets, hidden agendas, complex maneuvers and, sooner or later, gunplay or chases or kidnappings or bursts of chaotic force. Yet the self-seriousness of most spy fiction is nowhere to be found. The surface fizz is closer to a comedy series: the exchange of witty insults and off-colour jokes, visual comedy and personality-driven moments—Herron’s oddball cast chafing against each other while they sit in their rundown workspace in a central location, tolerating their mundane assignments.

Series Regulars

Cartwright is convalescing from a exposure to a chemical weapon. A colleague is on the mend from a severe injury. A member is still pushing people who get on her nerves through glass panes. The reliably awful tech expert Ho has acquired a tattoo. Lamb is continuing to produce cigarettes from unlikely places—beneath his clothing while adjusting, mostly. Standish, former addict, is acting as the voice of reason, the straight woman to his cynical wit.

More Than Humor

It’s not quite a sitcom in structure though. In a sitcom, the cast remains more or less stable and each episode is self-contained. But as the narrative progresses, individuals grow and meet their end, political landscapes shift—tracking, roughly the real-world politics; an hinted-at political figure has an unflattering walk-on—and longer story arcs develop. The new reader would find it rewarding to commence at the debut novel, Slow Horses, and read in sequence.

Strengths and Nuances

Does the approach showing signs of fatigue? In my view. Should there be a critique—{and it’s not much of one|and it