"He must come deep out of my subconscious, the 62-year-old thriller writer jokes, sipping mineral water at a rooftop bar in his home city of Oxford, a world away from London's Aldersgate where his bestselling Slough House series is set. In a blue shirt, white tee (fans will get the reference), he is softly spoken with a hint of a Geordie accent."
"Unlike le Carre, he's not, and never has been, a spy. Mysteriously, though, Wikipedia has given him an entirely fictitious birthday. I got cards. I got a cake, he says. For the uninitiated, the novels and award-winning TV series follow a bunch of misfit spooks exiled to Slough House from MI5 for various mishaps and misdemeanours, so far away from the shiny HQ in Regent's Park that it may as well be in Slough."
"I mean, why would you want to read it? It's great fun, for starters. In a genre dominated by sinister psychological dramas and slick spin-offs, Herron's mix of high jeopardy, low comedy and political satire might be described as a breath of fresh air, if the air in Slough House was not fetid with farts and frustration. Will Smith, co-writer of The Thick of It and Veep, was the ideal person to bring Herron's world to the screen:"
An unkempt, alcoholic MI5 officer presides over Slough House, where misfit spies exiled for errors and misdemeanours languish far from headquarters. The slow horses combine incompetence and stubborn loyalty to tackle high-stakes threats, repeatedly outmaneuvering more polished colleagues. The tone blends dark jeopardy, low comedy and political satire, mixing gritty realism with broad humor and bodily grossness. Television adaptation transfers the ragged ensemble and its foul-mouthed leader to screen, emphasizing sharp dialogue and a corrosive comic sensibility. The central figure resembles a hard-drinking, morally complex antihero whose ragtag team's resourcefulness repeatedly subverts institutional arrogance.
Read at www.theguardian.com
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