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<blockquote data-quote="Old Fezziwig" data-source="post: 9586537" data-attributes="member: 59">I just finished Slow Horses, Mick Herron's first Slough House novel.&nbsp; I watched snippets of the show while my wife watched it, but I didn't pay a tremendous amount of attention.&nbsp; My impression was that Gary Oldman's Jackson Lamb was kind of like a black hole pulling everything in the show towards him.&nbsp; And I know that later novels in the series have a similar tendency -- one piece I read felt that the later novels position Lamb as heroic rather than as an awful but effective goblin.&nbsp; I can see how that'd happen.&nbsp; Herron's never having as much fun as he is when he's writing Lamb.&nbsp; The rest of the characters are kind of thinly drawn, and there seems to be a resistance on Herron's part at getting to know too many of his other characters too well.&nbsp; It could be an intentional move on his part -- most of the characters aren't particularly self-aware and many of them are in some form of denial about how things have come to be as they are (they're not great at taking responsibility, which is what separates them from Lamb, who appears to at least be decent at that).&nbsp; But I'll reserve judgment on that for now and see how his writing develops in future novels.&nbsp; On the whole, it was fun, what I might call a smart beach read (almost like Arturo Perez-Reverte's Captain Alatriste, maybe?). Herron takes things seriously but holds them lightly.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Old Fezziwig, post: 9586537, member: 59"] I just finished [I]Slow Horses[/I], Mick Herron's first [I]Slough House[/I] novel. I watched snippets of the show while my wife watched it, but I didn't pay a tremendous amount of attention. My impression was that Gary Oldman's Jackson Lamb was kind of like a black hole pulling everything in the show towards him. And I know that later novels in the series have a similar tendency -- one piece I read felt that the later novels position Lamb as heroic rather than as an awful but effective goblin. I can see how that'd happen. Herron's never having as much fun as he is when he's writing Lamb. The rest of the characters are kind of thinly drawn, and there seems to be a resistance on Herron's part at getting to know too many of his other characters too well. It could be an intentional move on his part -- most of the characters aren't particularly self-aware and many of them are in some form of denial about how things have come to be as they are (they're not great at taking responsibility, which is what separates them from Lamb, who appears to at least be decent at that). But I'll reserve judgment on that for now and see how his writing develops in future novels. On the whole, it was fun, what I might call a smart beach read (almost like Arturo Perez-Reverte's Captain Alatriste, maybe?). Herron takes things seriously but holds them lightly. [/QUOTE]

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