Review of Mick Herron's Dead Lions

Dead Lions by Mick Herron

Let's say a telephone line worker is out working in the phone company truck one day when he realizes he forgot his lunch at home. So he drives home in the truck to get his lunch, and on the way back he blows through a stop sign and hits a car. Now let's say, instead, that the worker decides to ignore that boring packed lunch and drives over to the Bada Bing for a lunch of beer, chicken wings and live entertainment. On the way back to the job, he blows through a stop sign and hits a car.

Is the phone company liable for the worker's car accident? Well, this is where the delightfully-named "frolic and detour" principles of the law kick in. The first scenario is a mere detour, which means that the worker was still sufficiently on the job to make the phone company liable for his accident. But the second scenario is a frolic (in more ways than one), and the phone company isn't liable.

Now let's say the employer isn't the phone company, but Britain's MI5 intelligence service, the line worker is an entire small office building's worth of castoff agents gone rogue, and the damage ranges from severe embarrassment to kneecapping to gory death. In other words, not just a detour or even a frolic, but some whole new legal concept, like maybe ruckus, binge, spree, rampage, rumble or wingding. Though maybe being British, they'd go for understatement and call it something like a perturbation.

Whatever you call it, and whatever the legal consequences, what we have in Mick Herron's Dead Lions is decidedly not just another day on the job. At MI5, if you screw up in a big way––like become a blackout drunk or punch out another agent in the lunchroom or let highly confidential material fall into the hands of the press––then you end up being moved from Regent's Park to Slough House. At Slough House, the "Slow Horses" are given endless, dull paperwork, in hopes they'll give up and resign.

In case the humiliation of becoming a Slow Horse, and the tedium of the work aren't enough encouragement to quit, Slough House boss Jackson Lamb turns up the discomfort level with a constant stream of insults, demeaning assignments (like picking up his takeout orders) and crude gross-outs, like aiming his deadly flatulence directly at his charges.

The current denizens of Slough House are made of sterner stuff, though, and won't be pushed into resigning. Or maybe it's just that they're too stubborn or stupid to realize the movers will never be taking them back to Regent's Park.

As the story begins, an old street agent named Dickie Bow is found dead on a bus near Oxford. Lamb figures out that is murder and that it's connected with a Cold War Russian spy named Alexander Popov––who may be real or may be a fiction created by MI5 back in the day. Nobody at Regent's Park would want to be bothered with this, Lamb thinks. They're far too busy spying and conducting disinformation campaigns on each other; probably not all that interested in some washed-up low-level stringer agent from a war they've all but forgotten. Lamb harnesses all the Slow Horses to work on the case; all, that is, except for the two who get a call from the Park to provide protection to a visiting Russian oil baron, Arkady Pushkin, while he's in London for some high-profile meetings and possible recruitment by the Park.

Did you notice that Alexander Popov and Arkady Pashkin have the same initials? One of the Slow Horses, Catherine Standish, does, and that worries her. At first, Lamb is dismissive: "Give me a break. I've got the same initials as . . . Jesus Lhrist, but I don't go on about it. This isn't an Agatha Christie." You'd better believe it isn't an Agatha Christie, and Lamb's crudity isn't the half of it. As Catherine's suspicions ferment, the plot bubbles with sleeper spies, Russian gangsters, riot in the streets, guns, explosions and mayhem in London's newest, loftiest skyscraper.

It can be a little difficult at times to keep all the Slow Horses straight, and the plot loses a bit of steam in the middle, but get past this and enjoy Herron's writing. It's full of style and cynical humor, and the last third has all the punch-your-lights-out action of a movie thriller––though the Slow Horses' nonexistent budget means that chases are on foot or bicycle, and the weaponry is in short supply.

Dead Lions will be published on May 7, 2013 by Soho Crime. There is plenty of time before then to read Slow Horses, Herron's introduction to the Slough House crew, which was a finalist for the Crime Writers Association Steel Dagger Award in 2010. And maybe I'll also read his Zoë Boehm series: Down Cemetery Road, The Last Voice You Hear, Why We Die and Smoke & Whispers.

Dead Lions reminded me of just how effective and dangerous––not to mention entertaining––intelligence agency castoffs can be. If that piques your interest, you might try Bob Cook's Disorderly Elements, featuring the mole-hunting exploits of Michael Wyman, laid off from MI6 with no pension and a baby on the way; or Paper Chase, a wicked caper about four retired agents who decide to get back at the current crop of MI6 whippersnappers who have the bad manners to issue them written orders not to write any memoirs of their intelligence service.

Or how about Brian Garfield's Hopscotch, in which a 25-year CIA agent is booted out and, missing the thrills of the job, decides to threaten to expose all he knows about the Cold War powers' secrets, for the pure adrenaline-pumping pleasure of getting them all to chase after him? The film adaptation of the book is a hoot, too, and features the perversely charismatic pairing of Walter Matthau and Glenda Jackson. For sheer, giddy detour, frolic, hubbub and cartoonishly violent uproar involving former agents, it's hard to beat the movie RED, with Bruce Willis, Morgan Freeman, Helen Mirren, John Malkovich and Mary-Louise Parker.


Note: I received a publisher's review copy of Dead Lions. Versions of this review may appear on Amazon, Goodreads and other reviewing sites under my user names there.

Procrastinators of the World, Unite!

Today's date brings me joyous relief. Why? It's my day to talk to you about books, and it's also National Procrastination Week. I'm not sure exactly what about procrastination we're supposed to celebrate (naturally, I'll put off investigating until tomorrow), but I choose to think we procrastinators are granted a guilt-free week for getting caught up. We can yet again resolve to do things in a more timely manner. I'll do that later. Right now I want to tell you about a book whose review fell prey to my procrastination and then I'll mention a few other good books and the movies made from them.

Liars Anonymous by Louise Ure

If you grew up in the United States, you probably heard the story of the young George Washington and the cherry tree. His father finds his beautiful tree lying on the ground and asks George if he knows who chopped it down. George replies, "I can't tell a lie, Pa; you know I can't tell a lie. I did cut it with my hatchet." Rather than punish George for cutting down the tree, his father praises him for his honesty. We'll postpone debating the truth of this legend.

On Washington's birthday in February, my idea was to write not about an honest hero, but about Louise Ure's Jessica Dancing Gammage. Washington's birthday is past, but it's never too late for reading about Jessie. If there was a 12-step program for liars, like there is for alcoholics, prosecutor Ted Dresden says she'd be its "queen and founder and president." Jessie is honest enough with us, however, to begin her narration of Liars Anonymous with these words:

I got away with murder once, but it doesn't look like that's going to happen again. Damn. This time I didn't do it. Well, not all of it, anyway.

"This time" involves Darren Markson. When the airbag in the Cadillac he's driving in the desert near Tucson, Arizona deploys, it triggers a satellite phone call to Jessie, a HandsOn car emergency service operator in Phoenix. Markson tells Jessie that he's been rear-ended and he's going to talk to the guy in the other car. She hears him get out of his car. Three people speak briefly and next come alarming noises of a physical fight before someone disconnects the HandsOn call. Jessie is disturbed enough to do something illegal. She reactivates the audio connection to Markson's Cadillac and listens to sounds that she interprets as Markson's murder.

Jessie's call to 911 prompts a Tucson police investigation of the accident site. There is some evidence left by the collision but no cars or people are found. The police ask Jessie for help interpreting the HandsOn evidence. She leaves Phoenix––where HandsOn knows her as Jessie Dancing, and Mind Your Manors housesitting service knows her, falsely, as "a former nun and nondrinker, with an allergy to pet dander"––and heads to Tucson, her hometown. There, she is known as the woman who three years earlier was acquitted of murder. She immediately runs into problems.

The story about Markson that she tells Detective Deke Treadwell is undercut by Markson's wife Emily, who knows nothing about an accident and says her husband called her the day after Jessie says he was rear-ended. Markson said he was flying to a meeting in New Mexico and that he'd left his car in the airport parking lot. Jessie, an expert in lying, diagnoses a bad liar and resents being drawn into a subterfuge.

Det. Treadwell, former partner of Jessie's retired father, and her father are the only ones who still believe Jessie isn't a murderer. Other cops and attorneys in the DA's office resent her reappearance in Tucson and are suspicious of her involvement with the missing Markson. As Jessie explains, "Declared not guilty of a crime I had committed, I was not about to be railroaded into one I had not." She has no choice but to figure out what happened to Markson.

While Jessie is sucked into the spiraling violence surrounding Markson's vanishing, she tells us, bit by bit, about herself and the murder she committed. Jessie is the first of seven children. Her mother always kept her at arm's length and now she considers Jessie dead. After majoring in philosophy in college, Jessie had been working as a bartender when her very close friend Catherine died. That's when Jessie "took over her quest" and killed someone. She confides, "You would have thought those studies would have better prepared me to come to terms with becoming a killer, but the ethics of killing were still a muddle to me. If you take a life, does it change you? Yes, in a thousand shadowed ways. Is it worth it? Sometimes."

Jessica Dancing Gammage is an extraordinary character whose story deals with personal responsibility and the gulf between guilt and innocence. Liars Anonymous is full of action, but it's Jessie, the honest liar, and the story's ending that blew me away.

My husband and I are enjoying our own crime fiction film festival. Don't put off reading these outstanding books and watching their movies:

Prizzi's Honor

Richard Condon. Two mafia killers fall in love in Condon's black comedy, Prizzi's Honor. It was made famous by the John Huston film starring Jack Nicholson, Kathleen Turner and Anjelica Huston. Condon also wrote The Manchurian Candidate, an outstanding Cold War conspiracy thriller about thought control and political assassination. It was made into a great 1962 movie with Frank Sinatra, Laurence Harvey and Janet Leigh, and filmed again in 2004 with Denzel Washington, Meryl Streep, Liev Schreiber and Jon Voight. Watch them both and see if you agree with me that the earlier one is better.

High Sierra

W. R. Burnett. In Little Caesar, crime's a hoppin' in Chicago during Prohibition. Cesare "Rico" Bandello has killed a cop and is climbing organized crime's career ladder before he's forced to run for his life. Edward G. Robinson and Douglas Fairbanks Jr. star in the classic 1930 movie of the same name. Who hasn't seen Humphrey Bogart, Ida Lupino, Alan Curtis and Arthur Kennedy in John Huston's 1941 High Sierra? Burnett wrote the noir novel about a Palm Springs, California heist before collaborating on the movie with Huston. In 1950, Huston filmed Burnett's The Asphalt Jungle, which stars Sterling Hayden, Jean Hagen and Sam Jaffe in a caper story about a jewelry robbery.

A Kiss before Dying

Ira Levin. This writer was a machine for turning out books that became movies. A Kiss before Dying involves a scheming psychopath who wants a fortune and decides that courting a rich family's daughters is one way to get it. Robert Wagner stars in the 1956 film that also introduces Joanne Woodward. Forget the 1991 remake with Matt Dillon and Sean Young. In the supernatural/horror thriller Rosemary's Baby, Rosemary and her husband Guy move into a new apartment house and when Rosemary becomes pregnant, she finds Guy and the other tenants increasingly spooky. Many of us are familiar with the movie featuring Mia Farrow and John Cassavetes. Like Rosemary in Rosemary's Baby, Joanna Eberhart feels like a fish out of water in the satirical novel The Stepford Wives. The other married women in Stepford, Connecticut are strangely docile. The Stepford Wives was filmed multiple times but the only version I like is the 1975 version with Katharine Ross. I've written before about Levin's neo-Nazi thriller The Boys from Brazil (here). I've yet to read or see Levin's Sliver, which is about voyeurism and obsession. I might take a pass on the movie unless someone can recommend it. The Rotten Tomatoes website viewers rated it a solid rotten splat, with only 12 percent liking it!

Fellow procrastinators, I hope you enjoy our week. Let's all vow to be better about being on time. Tomorrow. For now, I vote we curl up with a good book. I'm heading for the couch with Herman Koch's The Dinner. What about you?

Deciding on your style is one more good way to procrastinate

Can't Sleep? A Prescription to be Accompanied by Judicious Applications of Crackers or Popcorn

Let's say you didn't choose to go to bed with a murderer. You went to bed to sleep. You lie there and lie there but sleep has overpowered everyone but you: the clerk at the new Holiday Inn across town, your neighbors across the street, your loved one and animals dispersed across the bed. Don't panic. I have a prescription for you. It won't put you to sleep, but it will make you glad you're awake.

Pick one of the great books below. If you're in bed with a partner, and he or she dislikes your eating crackers in bed while you're reading, now is the time. Crackers on a plate are best because it's the sound of rummaging in the cracker box that brings a sleeper to crabby consciousness. (I'm assuming you eat with a minimum of lip smacking, grinding noises, and moaning.) If reading requires too much concentration in your zonked-out-but-can't-sleep state, choose one of these movies. Accompany with popcorn. (If your DVD player is in the bedroom, keep the sound down and don't pelt any sleeper next to you with popcorn. This is to ensure that your viewing pleasure isn't interrupted by the eruption of Mt. St. Awakened from a Pleasant Dream.) Ta da. Happiness.

James Ellroy, L.A. Confidential, 1990. Ellroy has a bleak view of the world, and the book is wonderful noir, but not for everybody. The plot is complex; however, it boils down to seriously troubled or flawed cops in 1950s Los Angeles, who bust heads while solving crimes or committing them themselves. Kim Basinger won an Oscar for her role in the 1997 movie. It doesn't try to cover the whole book, but it does a great job of translating it from paper to the screen. Also stars Kevin Spacey, Russell Crowe, Guy Pearce, James Cromwell, and Danny DeVito.

Elmore Leonard, Get Shorty, 1990. Loan shark Chili Palmer travels from Florida to Hollywood in order to collect a bad debt. Once he gets there, he discovers he likes it and wants a piece of the action. Not everyone is pleased. Made into a movie with John Travolta (as Chili Palmer), Gene Hackman (as B-movie maker Harry Zimm), Danny DeVito, Rene Russo, and Dennis Farina in 1995. Fun book; fun movie.

Davis Grubb, Night of the Hunter, 1953. Noir. A man disguised as a preacher tracks down an executed man's widow. Her young son discovers why. The "preacher" is an incredibly evil man and one of mystery fiction's best villains. He's played by Robert Mitchum, scary as hell, in a movie directed by Charles Laughton and also starring Shelley Winters. An unforgettable book and movie, too.

John D. MacDonald, The Executioners, 1958 (also published as Cape Fear, 1962). Rapist Max Cady blames small-town lawyer Sam Bowden for his imprisonment. Now Cady is out and in Bowden's town, making veiled threats against Bowden and following his 14-year-old daughter around. Bowden knows it's only a matter of time until an explosion will happen. Made into a movie Cape Fear in 1961 with Gregory Peck (Sam Bowden), Robert Mitchum (Max Cady), and Polly Bergen. Martin Scorsese directed the 1991 remake of Cape Fear with Robert De Niro (Max Cady), Nick Nolte (Sam Bowden), and Jessica Lange. The movies are interesting to compare in that both are very suspenseful, but the interpretations of the Max Cady and Sam Bowden characters by Peck/Mitchum and De Niro/Nolte are very different. I like both versions.

Peck and Mitchum are diametrically opposed; Peck is an upright man, while Mitchum is a relentless man intent on sadistic revenge. Nolte and De Niro are more complex characters. Watching the less-than-completely ethical Nolte and the disturbing-but-wronged De Niro, you know De Niro must be stopped, but you'd still like to see justice done. Mitchum and De Niro are particularly interesting to compare. De Niro is a maniac while Mitchum is implacable. It isn't often that you can read a book and then watch two directors' interpretations of it and compare top actors occupying the same roles. Don't miss your chance to do it with Cape Fear.

Elmore Leonard, Out of Sight, 1996. Bank robber Jack Foley breaks out of a Florida prison one night and runs into U.S. Marshall Karen Sisco, who has just arrived. Foley's accomplice, Buddy Bragg, hops into the car while Foley climbs into the trunk with their hostage, Sisco. After years in prison, how does Foley share a trunk with a beautiful woman and not fall in love, even if she is a U.S. marshall? Made into an entertaining movie with George Clooney and Jennifer Lopez.

If you're in the mood for another Leonard book/movie combo, try his novel Rum Punch, in which airline hostess Jackie Burke is caught bringing money into the country for gunrunner Ordell Robbie. The cops bring pressure on her to set him up, but this is a Leonard plot so things don't go as originally planned. Leonard's Rum Punch was used by Quentin Tarantino as the basis for his movie Jackie Brown, starring Pam Grier, Robert Forster, Robert De Niro, and Samuel L. Jackson.

James M. Cain, Double Indemnity, 1943. A classic hard-boiled story in which an evil, greedy woman talks a he-should-know-better-but-he's-no-longer-thinking-with-his-brain insurance agent into committing fraud and murder. Raymond Chandler worked on the screenplay, and Billy Wilder directed the 1944 movie starring a hard-as-nails Barbara Stanwyck, the basset hound-like Fred MacMurray, and Edward G. Robinson, who plays MacMurray's boss. A great movie made from a terrific book.

Victor Canning, The Rainbird Pattern, 1972. There are two plot threads, one involving a series of elaborate kidnappings and another involving a psychic (and her lover), working for an elderly woman who wishes to reunite her family. Eventually the threads connect. This book inspired Alfred Hitchcock's mischievous last film, Family Plot, made in 1976. William Devane/Karen Black are the sophisticated baddies, and Bruce Dern/Barbara Harris, the disorganized goodies; they all look like they're having fun.

Raymond Chandler, The Big Sleep, 1939. The corrupting influence of money! White-knight private eye Philip Marlowe is hired by old General Sternwood to investigate why book dealer Arthur Geiger has an IOU signed by his daughter Carmen, who is not a goody two shoes. This is Chandler's first book. William Faulkner worked on the screenplay, and the 1946 movie stars Humphrey Bogart, Lauren Bacall, Peter Lorre, Sydney Greenstreet, and Elisha Cook, Jr. The plot has some holes, but with these actors, who cares? In 1978, a remake was made with James Stewart, Sarah Miles, and Oliver Reed. Strangely, the setting is no longer Chandler's 1930s Los Angeles, but 1970s London. Do I need to tell you it's not as good as the 1946 classic?

Raymond Chandler, Farewell, My Lovely, 1940. Moose Malloy's girlfriend Velma, a cute redhead, disappeared after he went to prison. Now Malloy is out and insists that a reluctant Marlowe look for her. The characters and settings in this book are so vividly done you'll ache after reading. Farewell, My Lovely was made into a movie several times: The 1944 movie Murder, My Sweet stars Dick Powell as a decent Marlowe and Mike Mazurki as Malloy. Robert Mitchum, who looks like he's been around the block a few times here (I love that man!), plays Marlowe and Jack O'Halloran plays Malloy in the 1975 full-color remake, Farewell, My Lovely.

Rex Stout's Nero Wolfe could have been talking about Chandler when he said that a writer he admired rode words bareback. Nobody in mystery fiction used words like Chandler. If you haven't bothered to read him yet, you have a tremendous treat in store. Keep a couple of his books by your bed (The Long Goodbye, The Little Sister, The Lady in the Lake), and if you can't sleep, be happy that you have the chance to read one.

Frederick Forsyth, The Day of the Jackal, 1971. French dissidents bungle an attempt on Charles de Gaulle's life so they hire a professional assassin code named "the Jackal" to do the deed. This is a race between the Jackal and Commissaire Claude Lebel, France's best detective, who has been assigned to find and stop him, without a speck of help from de Gaulle, an extremely brave and haughty leader who sees no need to alter his schedule in the slightest way, or others in power who would like to see Lebel fail. It was made into a movie in 1973. Michael Caine wanted the role, but director Fred Zinnemann wanted an unknown actor, so Edward Fox stars as the Jackal.

Brian Garfield, Hopscotch, 1975. Hopscotch won an Edgar for Best Novel. It is the story of a CIA agent who is so bored with retirement that he decides to do something about his boredom; he'll force his former CIA colleagues and Russian counterparts to hunt him down and eliminate him. Garfield wrote the screenplay for the movie, but rather than a suspenseful story like his book, the 1980 movie is a comic spy spoof with Walter Matthau and Glenda Jackson.

Dashiell Hammett, The Maltese Falcon, 1929. The search for a legendary statuette leads to betrayal and murder. Read the book and then watch the 1941 John Huston movie, which stars Humphrey Bogart as private detective Sam Spade along with Mary Astor, Sydney Greenstreet, and Peter Lorre. Both book and movie are classics and unforgettable.

Need more recommendations for a book by Hammett? Put those sleepless hours to good use reading his The Glass Key, involving political corruption, loyalty, double-dealing, and a love triangle in an anonymous city in New York or his Red Harvest, in which a private operator takes on a corrupt town.

Philip MacDonald, The List of Adrian Messenger, 1959. Ten names appear on a list, and it's not one composed by Santa Claus. The names' owners are murdered. Find out why and we'll know by whom. In the 1963 movie based on the book, Anthony Ruthven Gethryn (George C. Scott) is asked to investigate the murders. This is the movie in which some big-name Hollywood actors appear in disguise, and you're supposed to see if you recognize them. At the end, they reveal themselves. Fun.

Geoffrey Homes (pseudonym of Daniel Mainwaring), Build My Gallows High, 1946. A man's mysterious past unfortunately catches up with him. Mainwaring also wrote the screenplay for the 1947 movie based on his book, Out of the Past, starring Robert Mitchum, Jane Greer, and Kirk Douglas. This is my husband's favorite noir film and is considered by many to be one of the best noir movies ever made. I love the book and the movie.

Robert Traver, Anatomy of a Murder, 1958. THE classic courtroom drama written by a former Michigan state supreme court justice. An ex-DA defends a soldier accused of killing the man who raped his wife. In 1959, the book was made into a gripping movie directed by Otto Preminger and starring James Stewart as the defense attorney, George C. Scott as the prosecutor, Ben Gazzara as the defendant, and Lee Remick as the wife. The judge was played by a Boston lawyer named Joseph Welch, who had figured as a good guy in the Sen. Joseph McCarthy hearings.

Dashiell Hammett, The Thin Man, 1934. A charming book about the dapper ex-detective Nick Charles and his excitement-loving wife, Nora. They're in New York on vacation over the holidays when they become involved in a disappearance and murder. William Powell and Myrna Loy star with the dog Asta (schnauzer in the novel, but a wire-haired fox terrier on the screen) in the not-to-be-missed movie series: The Thin Man, After The Thin Man, Another Thin Man, Shadow of the Thin Man, Song of the Thin Man, and The Thin Man Goes Home. You'll want a martini while watching one of these movies.

Jim Thompson, The Grifters, 1963. Oh man, con man Roy Dillon, his scheming mom Lilly, and his main squeeze Moira Langtry have dysfunctional relationships in this excellent but depressing noir book about the ability to control one's fate. The Grifters is a good movie, too; the acting is really something. Anjelica Huston, John Cusack, Annette Bening, and Pat Hingle star. Donald E. Westlake wrote the script.

Thompson is a powerful writer whose noir comes in handy for those times you're annoyed with your overly optimistic sister or you want confirmation that the world is a bleak place. He's not the most pessimistic writer in mysterydom (if anybody can beat David Goodis in that department, I want to hear about it), so you'll be able to face the world when the cruel sun comes up and it's time to stop reading. You might even be able to smile after you've had a cup of coffee.

Roman Polanski's 1974 movie, Chinatown, isn't based on a particular book by Raymond Chandler, but it is regarded as that director's homage to Chandler. J. J. Gittes (Jack Nicholson) is a private eye, Noah Cross (John Huston) is a robber baron, and Faye Dunaway is Cross's daughter in 1930s Los Angeles. Stir in corruption of the political and moral kind, and you have a wonderful movie experience.

Now, aren't you pleased you read a fantastic book or watched an incredible movie? Sometimes sleep is overrated and best kept for those moments when you have nothing better to do. I prescribe it for the dentist's chair, your doctor's waiting room, or while you're waiting for your daughter to try on all the shoes in the store. But then again, these are times for a good book, too....