Even though I toiled through the first 60 pages of each Jackson Lamb thriller before giving up, I was unable to find them in any way gripping or amusing and liked neither the characters nor the plots. Unfortunately, I had requested all four books of this series at once and was kindly given free copies by netgalley in return for an honest review.

Please see my review of Slow Horses, the first book in the series.

I could not get into this book. Not for me.

A most exciting and intriguing thriller concerning vicious political skulduggery with regard to secret government files that one lot want to keep secret so as to maintain the status quoi while others want it publicly revealed so as to change the balance of political power. As usual the warring factions find it useful to use the slow horses as pawns in their game. Unfortunately as the pawns begin to suspect that it will end with their heads on the block, this causes their latent attributes to be brought to the fore to ensure their survival. Things never turn out as expected and as usual ends in mayhem with quite a few bodies scatted around although the slow horses manage to escape more or less unscathed. This is the third book in the series and it develops the various characters nicely.

Won’t be reading this so unable to provide any sort of review but would not recommend this author to anyone, sorry, just too dull!

Witty, incisive dialogue requiring willingly-given attention drives this book alongside Jackson lamb's eccentric personality .. he heads up team of able but askew personalities signed his odd intelligence department. Set in UK often his team get involved in sitting out internal politics of MI5 .. and ruthless they are, involving serious cover iPad and personal careers that June on them .. this one goes right to top and involved a kidnap of one of lambs key people though he never asked that. And then he makes unforgivable gaff with her. His management style involved brinkmanship and brio .. and it usually works out if you don't count the dead bodies. Fine tough and intellectually demanding entertainment, the best kind!!

Another exciting episode in the Jackson Lamb series with the same disparate characters to the fore! A good plot line builds to the climax with cross and double cross keeping one on ones toes. Entertaining tongue in cheek tosh! Brilliant.

This is the 3rd book in the 'Slough House' series by author Mick Herron. Slough House is a dumping ground for British intelligence agents who have messed up a case. The "slow horses," are given menial tasks rather than be trusted on bigger cases.
The more I read of this series the more I like it. Another adventure for the rejected spies that is full of humour and a decent plot. On to the next book in the series.
I would like to thank Net Galley and John Murray Press for supplying a copy of this novel in exchange for an honest review.

My review on LT:
This series gets better and better: the twists and turns of the duplicitous MI5 and plotting apparatchiks. The black humour continues to flow and the Boris Johnson digs are entertaining.
"Taverner said, “This is not the sort of juggernaut you want to walk in front of, Jackson.”
“Oh, I don’t know. Don’t forget, I have my team to consider.”
“Really? That’ll be a first.”
“They have a natural respect for me.”
“That’s not respect. It’s Stockholm syndrome.”
(Also on Litsy)

3.5 Stars
Catherine Standish knows that chance encounters never happen to spooks. She's worked in the Intelligence Service long enough to understand treachery, double-dealing and stabbing in the back.
What she doesn't know is why anyone would target her: a recovering drunk pushing paper with the other lost causes in Jackson Lamb's kingdom of exiles at Slough House.
Whoever it is holding her hostage, it can't be personal. It must be about Slough House.
I’m definitely warming to Jackson Lamb & as with the other books in the series it takes time to get into the plot. An enjoyable read

My honest review is for a special copy I voluntarily read

Welcome to the shadowy nether regions of the British secret service. No, not the high-flying, glamorous licenced to kill types, but rather the drones who do all the basic administration, cataloguing, storing, retrieving and crunching data. There's low and there's low however and if you're a 'slow horse' working in Slough House, as you might know from Mick Herron's previous two novels in the series, your career has taken a turn for the worst and is unlikely to see any improvement. Can't be the most exciting job to have in MI5, you'd think, but you'd be surprised how dangerous office politics can be in such a place.

Misfits, losers, recovering alcoholics, agents whose operations have taken an unfortunate turn of events that they haven't recovered from; all of them seem to end up in Slough House. But they are still intelligence and they aren't stupid, even if they act like it sometimes. Take Catherine Standish for instance in Real Tigers. She's struggling to beat the bottle and her boss of Slough House, Charles Lamb isn't making the task an easy one, but any means. When Catherine is lifted off the street, it seems to be a miscalculation on the part of the kidnappers, as a slow horse being abducted surely isn't going to pull much leverage in Whitehall.

Her colleagues are quick to respond however, and you'd be surprised by their ingenuity, their ability to handle weapons, and their awareness of the kind of political and career manoeuvring that is mixed up in it all. All I'll say is that events escalate rapidly, the bodies start to mount up and there's a bit of a bloodbath for a conclusion that results in back covering, cover-ups and fallbacks into positions of deniability and mutual standoff - or simply keeping the knowledge won in reserve for a time when it might be more profitably used as a threat. Mick Herron's plotting is rivetting, keeping you on your toes for all the twists and turns, political shenanigans, potential scandals, double-dealing and backstabbing. What more can you ask for from a good spook novel?

Well, the writing is also devilishly clever and witty. It's clever enough that it manages to keep it real-world, office politics related, principally through the setting of such high-flown adventures in the lower orders of the secret service, but also with some knowing references to current familiar political situations and personalities. It will leave you under no illusion either as to the amount of data out there being gathered, and the kind of use it can be put to with a few simple connections. Real Tigers is witty in that Herron has a terrific ear for dialogue and characterisation. Every exchange of words between characters is explosive, loaded with hidden meanings, insults and putdowns that are usually matched by a highly original comeback or parry on every page. Talk about rapid response.

Such is the strength of the characterisation and the huge amount of information that is revealed through such exchanges that you won't need to have read any of the previous books in the Slough House series to get the most out of Real Tigers, but - like me - if you read this first, you'll definitely be going out and looking for the first two books in the series.

Sadly I was not able to really get into these, lauded though they have been. The odd quirky character is fine but going OTT on the bizarre characters filling this ensemble detracted from what could have been a great plot, really contemporary.

Book 3 in Mick Herron's Slough House series begins with what appear to be unrelated scenes: an ex-husband attempting to hang a banner complaining about lack of access to his children; Catherine Standish cold-shouldering a former friend and occasional lover who will soon kidnap her; the loathesome and unfortunate geek Roderick Ho humiliated by letting slip to two colleagues his assurance that another colleague is interested in him. As introductions go, these seem not to set much scenery, but they do: they're all about sexual tensions, except for River Cartwright's visits to James Webb (known inevitably as 'Spider'), the man who ruined his career, and who is now, much later, on life-support after a completely misjudged caper--one must call it that. And now an attempt to save Catherine's life.
And so things keep going in the bureaucratic way of going, especially in the Regent's Park building of MI5, into which River has talked his way and had the good fortune to fall under the wing of Molly Doran. The new ingredient is a strikingly loathsome Cabinet minister with striking likenesses to the clown, Boris Johnson, including his ambition-struck campaign to become Prime Minister.
One of the gracenotes of Herron's style appears to be to overload his readers with the actors who work at Slough House or Regent's Park; yet it doesn't feel like overload, as the individual characters are so well individualized. So, too, the changes of scene make perfect sense. What makes less than perfect sense is what on earth is going on. There is a clue in the book's title: a rogue action by MI5 designed (in theory) to test the strength of MI5's defences by bringing in the hired guns, oddly enough, by that Home Secretary (here's one I mentioned earlier). At this point we are not even half-way through, and still perplexity reigns. By the end of Part I the death toll begins to mount, not to mention the increasing risk to careers, and the betrayal rate soars. As Lamb puts it to his team of walking wounded, the thing about tigers is that some of them turn out to be real.
This is the funniest heart-breaking book I've read recently, a combination not to be missed
.

The grubby underworld of covert bureaucracy shines in a way you would not think possible, before reading Mick Herron

I have to say this book started as very slow and with a few characters so it was difficult to kind of understand the flow of the book. After 20% of the book, that is when the real interest begins (okay so maybe not 20% exactly, but you get the jist)

There are so many interesting characters in this book it is really hard to pinpoint which character I like better, I feel like there wasn't much depth to the characters. Now, this could be because of two reasons; one I have not read the other books in the series and two this book does not primarily focus on depth of the character but puts more emphasis on the plot instead which is a fairgiven.

I found myself skipping pages waiting for the story to start - I expected to find that a sentence, a paragraph, a page would jump out and lead me into the story. It didn't. For me, the characters didn't didn't draw me in and I never finished the book.

At an old folk's home for disgraced MI5 handlers, an intern is kidnapped by a revengeful ex-army man. Can his ex-operative mates save their comrade-in-arms? Heck, hang on. That's nothing compared to mercenaries, assassins, government conspiracies and the closure of their old folk's home. But these interns are tough. They are mean. They are resilient. Can they save the day? Read this characterful adventure to find out. Loved it.

A thoroughly enjoyable off-the-wall spy book. The dialogue between the idiosyncratic characters is great fun though the F-word is used quite frequently, but is probably in keeping with the real spooks. Although this was the first of the series I have read I didn't feel at a disadvantage not having read the earlier books. I also enjoyed reading the sequel, Spooks Street straight after.

My first book that I have read from the pen of Mick Herron. I love spy stories ,although this appears a bit quirky I really enjoyed it.
Fast paced with great dark humour running through the book. The characters appear in all the Slough House novels apparently with the head honcho an old cold war warrior Jackson Lamb ruling the roost..
The story unfolds around a secret document which one of the "slow horses" from Sough House is blackmailed in obtaining in order to get released his colleague who has been kidnapped .
There are twists and turns, betrayals and murder. What a great spy story.
Looking forward to reading the rest of Mick Herrons Slough House stories.

There’s no doubt about it: Mick Herron blows the bloody doors off with the opening chapters of Real Tigers. This is stand-out, showboat, top rank writing, honed close to perfection with all the skill and dedication of an artisan craftsman. Mind you, people who haven’t read the two earlier novels in the ‘Slough House’ trilogy will probably find it utterly impenetrable and frustrating as all hell. So if you’ve not already experienced ‘Slow Horses’ then go back and start there, not here.

If you don’t know the scenario – Slough House is the career cul-de-sac where MI5 sends its hopeless but unsackable agents to harmlessly fade to grey – and haven’t already met the characters – alcoholics, an IT geek with hopeless personal skills, disgraced field agents and the magnificent Jackson Lamb – then you’ve no hope of gaining any traction with them in this book.

All the background inter-agency politics, all Herron’s wonderfully indulgent tradecraft, operating procedures and agency slang; it’s all worth getting to know properly before you indulge yourself in the glorious experience that is the first quarter of Real Tigers.

After then, the style fades somewhat (just as well; Herron would be superhuman to have kept it up throughout), and by the final third the plot goes wildly implausible with a Bond-style shoot out to save the day / the country’s secrets / a kidnapped Slow Horse / Lamb’s career. But it’s possible to forgive the less likely events, which include the kind of bodycount that’d make Rambo proud, to enjoy Herron’s pointed political and social observations, his skilful character manipulation, and his sweetly understated but savagely cynical dialogue. One high point: a character who seems to share an awful lot of similarities with Boris Johnson suffers an especially entertaining skewering…

The sheer volume of gushing luvvie media hype which surrounded this book when it first came out nearly stopped me reading it, but I’m pleased I overcame that prejudice to complete the trilogy. Mick Herron is regularly compared to John Le Carré, probably because the Slough House series focuses on internal agency and political rivalries. This is all about in-fighting and back-stabbing. Homeland security comes a very distant second to personal ambition: sod the terrorists, Herron’s spies are far too busy out-manoeuvring each other to worry about external threats.

If anything, I think Herron has just about exhausted the dramatic potential in this scenario, where intelligence agents spend their entire lives conspiring against their own colleagues. I hope that when these characters return (‘Spook Street’ is the next in the series) then he unwraps a new plot which doesn’t involve one layer of MI5 scheming against the next. It’s been mighty fun thus far, but the premise is wearing thin.

8/10