As Mick Herron’s Slough House spy novel series turns 15, he says he never expected it to succeed | Canada Voices

Looking back, it seems extraordinary that espionage novelist Mick Herron wasn’t an instant success. The writer who’s now often called his generation’s answer to John LeCarré published Slow Horses, his first Slough House book, in 2010 to little fanfare. The story follows a band of misfit spies who’ve been relegated for one reason or another – incompetence, politics – from the top tiers of Britain’s intelligence service to the bottom. The world was slow to catch on to the appeal of a story chronicling the Bad News Bears of British intelligence services, but in time the industry, and readers, caught on.

Since then, Slow Horses has become a series of books and an Apple TV+ hit. The books have sold more than four million copies, and counting. The latest instalment, Clown Town, will be released in September, followed by an anniversary special edition of Slow Horses in October. Season five of the series, starring Gary Oldman and Kristin Scott Thomas, also debuts this fall.

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Unlike his slow-horse characters, Herron’s career is soaring. His success comes in part by way of chance – the right people reading Slow Horses after its author had been dropped by his publisher and sales languished – but it’s also because they’re brilliant spy novels, mixing office politics and (mis)adventures in the field, offering a kind of distorted James Bond-meets-George Smiley with an element of, well, The Office.

Herron, who’s grateful for his success, hasn’t let it shape how he writes or to what end. He’s out to write great books, which he does. He’s now rooted in the tradition of espionage thrillers, such that future generations of spy novelists must, one way or another, enter into the genre through the doors of Slough House.

The series is 15 years old this year. When you were writing Slow Horses, did you intend it to be a series?

No, I didn’t. I was just writing a spy novel. My intention had been, as much as I have long-term plans, to return to my other detective series and write another Zoë Boehm novel after I finished it. As I approached the end, I realized that I wanted to stay with these characters, and that’s what I did.

So, I changed the ending. The original ending of Slow Horses would’ve rendered a sequel impossible. I would’ve done something catastrophic, blown up the house or something. But I think subconsciously I’d known that I wanted to write more because when I look back at the book, there’s a lot of work on those characters, particularly in the introduction sequences when I gave them all the backstories that would’ve been unnecessary if this book was a one-off.

As to whether I expected it to be a success: No. In fact, if anything, the opposite. And it became very clear quite quickly that it wasn’t going to be an immediate success because the book was longlisted for a Dagger Award, but didn’t get onto the shortlist as it didn’t have publisher support. And then my publisher dropped me, and it was quite clear that I was not destined for stardom. That didn’t matter to me very much. I wasn’t a writer because I wanted to be rich and famous. Writing is not the way to go about achieving that. It’s never been my aim.

Obviously I’m hugely grateful that they’ve taken off, and it’s altered my life, but it hasn’t altered my writing or my writing habits.

We live in an era in which streaming services tell producers to have their characters explain what they’re doing in dialogue, because viewers aren’t actually watching the show. They’re scrolling on their phones. But the Slough House books and the TV series have broken through despite the fact they ask a lot of the viewer or reader. What’s keeping people hooked?

Gosh, I don’t know. I never asked myself that question because if I did, and if I supplied an answer to that, then I might focus my efforts in that direction. I think that I don’t write books for stupid readers; I suppose that is what it comes down to. The books do make demands, but I think readers like that, intelligent readers like that – they want to be stretched, the same way as intelligent viewers do.

I think the problem with dumbing down television or books is if you start treating your audience like they’re stupid, then that’s eventually what they will become, and that’s what they’ll expect. And they won’t want any more than that. As a reader myself — and I’m a reader before I’m a writer — I want to read intelligent fiction.

I read the Slough House books as studies in certain character traits and behaviours, typically negative: A study in cynicism, a study in tragedy, a study in incompetence. But it’s hard to read the books and not come to root for or even admire some of these characters. Did you consciously write the Slough House lot as semi-lovable anti-heroes?

I wanted to create people who could credibly occupy the space that I’d created for them. Having come up with the notion of Slough House, and this was somewhere where failures and people who had really messed up were sent, then I had to create people who would fit that profile. But regarding lovability, I think that when we understand other people, we sympathize with them; if I simply presented these characters as being mess-ups and incompetent, then there wouldn’t be any sympathy for them. They wouldn’t be lovable. They’d just be people who weren’t very good at their jobs.

I write with a lot of interiority, because I go into the heads of almost all of my characters. I’m inviting empathy from the reader, and readers are intelligent people and they’re aware that reading a book is entering someone else’s mindset – entering the author’s mindset, but also entering a fictional mindset of the characters there. And once you do that, then I think it’s hard to occupy somebody else’s living space, as it were, and not feel for them. So I think the lovability comes along with the understanding, I hope.

I would trust Jackson Lamb, head of Slough House, with my life. Reading the books, I first thought: This is not a man I’d want as my boss. But later, I decided I’d trust him with my life. I think that’s a bit of magic in the development of that character.

I would add the caveat, you’d trust him with your life if you work for him. I mean, if you don’t, he doesn’t give a toss.

Do you ever hear from people in, or adjacent to, the intelligence community? If so, what do they say about the books? I can imagine there are more than a few who prefer their careers to be imagined as closer to James Bond than to River Cartwright.

This is a difficult question to answer. I can’t say very much about it. I will say that those in the intelligence service are aware that my books are absolute fiction. They do know that what I write has got nothing to do with what they do. And for that reason, they’re quite happy to regard them with fondness.

I’m not rubbing anybody up the wrong way because they know that I’m making it all up. A lot of readers who have no experience in intelligence service, like me, do think that I must know more than I do, but I don’t. It’s all fantasy.

I want to try to place you in the tradition of British spy and thriller writing. Gary Oldman, who played John LeCarré’s George Smiley and who plays your Jackson Lamb, said that you are “The heir, in a way, to LeCarré.” It’s hard to think of greater praise. Where do you situate yourself?

That is huge praise, and I never spend much time trying to place myself in the tradition. And the fact is that I’ve read LeCarré, I’ve read Len Deighton, and I’ve read lots and lots of spy novels. I’ve seen lots of movies. I’ve seen lots of TV. That’s my research.

I don’t think I’m doing anything entirely new. Len Deighton was doing a lot of what I do now back in the 1960s. He was writing spy novels that, to some extent, were office-based, and there was a lot of office snark going on, and there was a lot of class being discussed, and there was a lot of humour. A lot of my writer’s DNA as a spy writer is coming from that source.

So, I wouldn’t want to place myself in the tradition because that seems to be largely something you do once you’re dead. And also I think it’s rather presumptive of me to do that.

You’ve sold millions of copies of your books. You received a Diamond Dagger Award this year. There are two Apple TV+ adaptations of your work, with a Zoë Boehm series coming out this fall. Regarding your success, last year, you told the Wall Street Journal: “The main lesson I’ve taken away from this is that if you’re only going to be successful in one half of your career, make it the second half. If it’s the first half, that’s a tragedy. But the second half is a happy ending.” It strikes me that this is a bit of an inversion of the lives of the Slough House characters.

My success is based on their grief [laughs]. I’m exploiting them. It hadn’t occurred to me, but you’re dead right.

It strikes a certain poetic balance. But is there, in any sense, a happy ending to be found or coming for the Slough House characters?

It would undermine a lot of the premise of the series if I started handing out redemption tickets. In real life, I want everybody to have a happy ending, obviously. But in terms of the fiction, I think it would be untrue to the books that I’m writing if I did. That’s not to say that everybody has to be permanently punished and thwarted. It’s just my notion of a happy ending doesn’t necessarily chime with other people’s.

To my view, Catherine has achieved a happy ending in the life that she’s living now because it could have been so much worse for her, and she’s aware of that. So, that’s something that I’m very conscious of. I think that the happy endings that my characters seek are not necessarily the ones they’re going to get, but I think that I can give them a certain amount of hope, or at least comradeship and a little glimmer here and there.

This approach is counter to what is often expected or demanded from readers or viewers who want a happy ending sailing off into the sunset. Often adaptations to film will change the book because, well, it’s a little too grim. Everyone’s got to be happy, otherwise people aren’t going to watch. But you’ve bucked that trend.

Well, I mean, other books are available, other TV shows are available. As I say, I write the books I want to write, and if I decide to write a happy novel with everybody riding off into a sunset holding hands, then I will do so. But it’s not what I’m after to write at the moment.

I’m glad that’s the case.

Maybe readers keep reading just in the hope that I’m going to do that, and then they can all heave a sigh of relief and stop.