I’m enjoying Mick Herron’s Slow Horses novels. Herron carefully controls the information given to readers. He misleads them in interesting ways. Characters die. He’s doing fascinating stuff with spy fiction as a genre. The main character Jackson Lamb is so not James Bond, and he leads a team of spies who have failed and been relegated to “Slough House,” as the rest of the agency calls it. The team has been nicknamed “Slow Horses” by others in the agency.
One technique Herron uses in Dead Lions, the second book of the series, is bookends or “a return with a difference.” The are lots of examples of this technique, from The Hero’s Journey generally to The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings specifically. (The hobbits return to The Shire changed and are able to make necessary changes there, for example.)
I think as a way to introduce new readers to the Slow Horses team in Dead Lions, Herron begins with a hypothetical cat sneaking into their base of operations. This hypothetical cat moves from room to room in the shabby building where the Slow Horses work. As readers follow the cat, they learn about different characters as they see how the characters inhabit their offices. Setting characterizes. Also, readers learn about the characters as they see their reactions to a hypothetical cat. I think at least one character feeds the cat. Most ignore it. Jackson Lamb drops it out the widow of his third-story office.
The return with a difference occurs as the novel ends. There is a general summary, but also a mouse that makes its way around Slough House. Like the cat, the mouse observes the characters. Those observations provide closure for character arcs and the closing of those character arcs helps close the narrative generally. In some cases, the presence of the mouse allows for characterization. Jackson Lamb, for example, upon seeing the mouse, says “What Slough House needs is a cat.”
I’ll continue reading this series because it’s compelling, and I find myself learning about writing from it.
Writing Fiction 