Why I feel shortchanged by Mick Heron and Ian McEwan
Mick Herron. Photo by Tim Duncan – own work, CC BY-SA 4.0
One has to wonder if Mick Heron’s latest novel, Clown Town, would’ve seen light of day if were not part of the Slow Horses series.
And would Ian McEwan have been told to rework the second part of his book and integrate it better with the first had he not been Ian McEwan?
Such questions come to mind when admiring readers prepare to be enthralled by the latest from the Heron or McEwan keyboard only to find themselves shortchanged.
I’ll start with Herron’s Clown Town, the ninth novel in the Slough House series. There are some good one-liners, as always. There are plot twists and turns through blood and gore. There is “surface fizz”, in the admiring words of one reviewer. Lives and careers hang in the balance. The nation’s new government is painfully earnest…and unpopular.
The story is based on real-world events in Northern Ireland – protection offered to a murderous IRA operative in exchange for serving as an intelligence asset.
All the ingredients are there for a gripping Slow Horse story. And yet…It took too long to get started. There was just too much throat-clearing, as we used to say in the BBC. Even when the story got going properly, it would often fade out with Herron seeming to be more interested in his deft way with words rather than where they’re taking us. At times, the whole exercise seemed to be more about a writer exulting in his writing chops rather than telling the tale in a way you can’t bear for him to stop.
Finally, Herron has left many obvious loose ends in this plot. These include the CCTV cameras Roddy Ho didn’t manage to take out, Ho’s own culpability on the day a certain illegal act is commissioned and executed by Jackson Lamb and what happens to “Lady Di” Diana Taverner.
The fact there are loose ends suggest Herron is setting up for the next novel, which can leave a reader feeling played and a prop in the next Slow Horses show.
Tomorrow: Ian McEwan’s best novel in years, until it wasn’t
