Pity the British publisher who first published Slow Horses in 2010. Sales disappointed the company, so they passed on Dead Horses, the second volume in the Slough House series, which features Jackson Lamb and his not-so-merry band of British-intelligence misfits. Soho Press picked it up, and then Apple TV+ came along with their show starring Gary Oldman, and Mick Herron now has more accolades than Lamb has bouts of intestinal gas. His latest novel is Clown Town, and Season Five of Slow Horses begins later this month. And since we can never have too much Herron, Down Cemetery Road, featuring his detective Zoë Boehm and starring Emma Thompson and Ruth Wilson, arrives on Apple TV+ in late October.
JIM KELLY: It’s always a challenge to interview spy novelists about their upcoming book, lest I let slip a spoiler. Each of your nine books relies on a beehive of sorts—right-wing crazies, the C.I.A., Russia, North Korea—that the action buzzes around, and in this case you find your beehive in the era of the Troubles in Northern Ireland. Why did you choose that period?
MICK HERRON: It was largely a MacGuffin, in fact—I wanted to write about the long-term effects of involvement in a morally dubious undercover operation. For a British writer, Northern Ireland during the Troubles makes for an obvious beehive, to borrow your term, for that kind of issue. But I’d hate anyone to think I thought I had important things to say about the era.
J.K.: This is your ninth full-length book featuring Jackson Lamb. Martin Cruz Smith, who died recently, wrote 11 Arkady Renko books, and Georges Simenon featured Inspector Maigret in 75 novels. Is it fair to say that Jackson Lamb’s ultimate appearance will fall somewhere between those two numbers?
M.H.: Let me do the maths. It takes me about 18 months to write a Slough House novel, so … No. You do the maths.
J.K.: One reason the Apple TV+ series is so popular is that the shows retain so much of the character and humor of the books, with some dialogue surely lifted directly from them. Had you considered being the show-runner, and did you have any say in the casting? I think you once described Lamb as a bit like Timothy Spall.
M.H.: Well, I never sought the job, and wouldn’t have accepted it if it had been offered…. The role of show-runner (which doesn’t technically exist in the U.K., I don’t think) is far too responsible for me to have undertaken, and the notion that I could have done what Graham Yost and Will Smith have done is funnier than any dialogue I’ve ever written. As for the casting, I had no say; better minds than mine were responsible for the brilliant lineup.
When I introduced Lamb onto the page, I did invoke Timothy Spall, it’s true. This was largely to avoid writing a detailed description: one allusion would do all the work, I decided, and Spall has frequently presented on-screen in a manner not a million miles from how Lamb might plausibly appear. It was a throwaway line that understandably keeps cropping up in interviews.
J.K.: When you first wrote the character of Jackson Lamb, did you base him and his traits on anyone you knew? And has his depiction by Oldman in any way influenced how you write about him in the last couple of books?
M.H.: If I had ever known, or worked with, anyone like Jackson Lamb, I’d have spent more time in therapy than at my laptop this last decade and a half. No, he’s purely fictional…. And for all Gary’s wonderful performance, the Jackson in my head—who is a voice, not a fully shaped human—remains the same as he has always been.
J.K.: Oldman, of course, played George Smiley in the Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy movie, and you make several references to John le Carré in your series. Let’s stay in this make-believe world and ponder this question: Would George Smiley and Jackson Lamb hate each other?
M.H.: One of them would hate the other, yes. I’m not telling you which one, though.
J.K.: You majored in English at Oxford, and I am curious why you chose detective fiction for your first few books and then spy fiction. Are these the kinds of books you loved reading as a child?
M.H.: I studied English—“majoring” isn’t a thing over here—but that didn’t influence my choice of genre when it came to being a writer. If it had done, I’d have given thought to being a Jacobean playwright, or perhaps a Romantic poet. But when it came to the crunch, being a late-20th-century novelist seemed a better fit (though, like many of my contemporaries, I’ve since matured into an early-21st-century novelist instead). As for choosing to write detective and then spy fiction, I’ve always admired Stephen King’s response when asked why he chose to write horror: “What makes you think I have a choice?”
I did read both detective and spy fiction as a child and continue to do so. I read a lot of other stuff, too, though.
J.K.: You are so prolific that I wonder what your daily writing routine is and if you rely on any tricks to combat writer’s block.
M.H.: The fact that there is a routine is more important than what it consists of. Mine is simply to go to my place of work and write until I’ve finished for the day. On a good day, that’ll be 800 words or so; more often it’s around 500. You get to be prolific if you do that five days a week. If it were only once a week or so, output would be rather more limited. More crucially, if a book is neglected for too long—if you don’t give it some of your attention on a daily basis—it can wither up and die. Perhaps routine wards off writer’s block. Who knows? I’ve never fallen victim myself.
J.K.: You said once that you are happy that the first half of your life as a writer was not so successful and the second half is, other than the other way around. Indulge me on this, but I am going to adjust your division and say the first third was not so great, the second third is great, and there is still a third act to come. What might it be? Diplomat? Comedian? Cat breeder?
M.H.: Trust me, I’ve said that more than once. But if there is a third act—which would truly put Scott Fitzgerald’s nose out of joint, wouldn’t it?—I expect I’ll end up piloting a tramp steamer somewhere in the South Pacific, with a side hustle playing piano in a jazz club.
Slow Horses’ Season Five and Down Cemetery Road premiere on Apple TV+ on September 24 and October 29, respectively
Jim Kelly is the books editor at Air Mail
