The Secret Hours - Mick Herron

 

Mick Herron's The Secret Hours is a novel that can be read and enjoyed on multiple levels. For some it will serve as a standalone novel, possibly even an introduction to Herron's work and his take on the world of espionage. For others, those readers who have already read all or most of Herron's Slough House series, The Secret Hours will read as the prequel to the series that they've been hoping for for a while now. 

Spies and politicians have always been closely linked, and they do not always agree on exactly which of them should be calling the shots - especially when it comes to means and methods. That's why one disgruntled prime minister decided to form the Monochrome inquiry, a small group tasked with uncovering any "historical over-reaching" by the British spy agencies. And now, just when it seems that the inquiry will come to nothing, the committee learns of something that happened in Berlin in 1994, something that fits the definition of over-reach perfectly.

Herron's story alternates between flashbacks to 1994 that are seen through the eyes of a young agent on her very first assignment and that same agent's witness testimony in the present. What the witness tells the committee will reveal the details of an operation that went so badly that its repercussions were felt at the highest levels of MI5 both then and now. 

But as I say, readers are certain to experience The Secret Hours differently. The novel's premise has all the makings of a standalone spy thriller, and it certainly works well as one, especially for readers who make the effort to keep up with all the character names right from the beginning. But longtime Slough House series readers are going to quickly figure out that there's a lot more there for them than for standalone readers. They will start to recognize characters from the series despite the fact that those characters are working in Berlin under aliases. They will begin to smile to themselves when they realize, that their favorite series characters have not changed a whole lot since this 1994 career-defining fiasco - and they will laugh out loud at the caustic wit and sarcasm they have become so accustomed to in Mick Herron's prose style. 

Personally, I'm grateful that I am caught up on the Slough House series, including novellas and short stories, because The Secret Hours answers so many questions I had about incidents only alluded to to one degree or another in the series books. This is most definitely the series prequel I've been wishing for.

Mick Herron jacket photo