Real Tigers by Mick Herron

Real tigers, in the wonderful series of novels about Slough House, an end point for failed spies, comes after Slow Horses (2010) Dead Lions (2014) and The list (2015) a novella, sometimes called the third in the series.

Real tigers introduces us to the level of deceit and subterfuge behind the political machinations of the day.

The workers in Slough House are wondering where Catherine Standish has got to. She is never late for work. River receives a photo of her in handcuffs on his phone and immediately takes action trying to find her. The kidnappers tell him that he will need to bring a file from Regent’s Park in exchange for her. River gets into the tightly controlled archives in the Park, but is caught and taken to the basement for an interview with the notorious Dufy. Meanwhile Lady Dianna is called into the office of MP Judd, where he discloses that the kidnapping was staged to expose how inept Slough House is and he will have all the evidence he needs to close it down when this fiasco is cleared up.

Judd is a weasel with an eye for the Prime Ministership, happy to walk over any body he finds and not fazed about how many bodies there are, as long as he is not implicated. But the leader of the Real Tigers, a friend and ally of Judd is killed by the second in command, and the body dumped in London central.

When a shaken and very sore River returns to Slough House, Lamb brings them all together to plan a way of getting Catherine back. Their small numbers are reduced even more when Lamb sacks two of them, effective immediately. The climax is absolutely thrilling as all protagonists end up together at the building housing the archives of material held by Regent’s Park. River and Louisa talk their way into the facility, but find the there are several other groups to deal with, Donovan and the Real Tigers are there to stop River taking the folder. Donovan goes about looking for the folder which implicates the head of MI5 in a conspiracy to cover a crime linked to Donovan.  But another group is on the ground keeping them holed up in the facility. Along comes Lamb ad Ho, bumbling their way into the action, while Duffy has been send by Ingrid to clean up the mess, that is, make sure no one leaves alive. On the outer, the sacked pair, Marcus and Shirley also make their way to support their former comrades.

The climax is wonderfully executed, readers will need to keep their wits about them to keep apart the disparate groups keeping tabs on each other and finally having a shoot out.

Themes: Intelligence organisations, Kidnapping, Secret service.

Fran Knight