57 pages • 1 hour read
Mick HerronSlow Horses
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2010A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Part 2, Chapters 9-13Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Part 2: “Sly Whores”
Part 2, Chapter 9 Summary
While Hassan is alone and frightened, Min and Louisa have a few drinks at the pub. The Voice of Albion have recently made an announcement of their intention to behead Hassan within 30 hours, and Min and Louisa wonder if Lamb knows anything new about the case. They decide to go back to Slough House to see what they can find. Once inside, they begin to kiss passionately but they are interrupted by the sound of someone moving upstairs. Min and Louisa encounter a masked black-clad figure in Lamb’s office. There is a struggle, and the figure and Min tumble down the stairs. The intruder falls awkwardly and is killed. Louisa takes off his mask. They know him.
Meanwhile, River finds himself lying in the hospital, remembering the time he fell out of a tree and broke his arm as a child. He has been taken to a locked cupboard for security after arriving to the hospital, on instructions from Nick Duffy. There is a guard stationed outside his door. River hears heavy footsteps approaching. Lamb subdues the guard and releases River. Lamb tells him Sid was shot in the head; she is still alive but in a critical condition. When Lamb asks River who shot her, he prevaricates for a moment before saying he thinks it was Jed Moody. River also tells Lamb that Sid had admitted she was a plant at Slough House. Lamb and River head toward Slough House.
When they arrive, they find Min and Louisa sitting on the stairs, the dead body of Jed Moody on the landing. Lamb instructs them to say that Moody had been threatening them with a gun. They inspect the body and find a bug that Moody was removing from Lamb’s office. Lamb also finds a burner phone, with only one number programmed in it. He calls it and tells the person who answers that they urgently need to meet.
Part 2, Chapter 10 Summary
Robert Hobden goes to the home of Peter Judd, an influential member of the Cabinet. Peter Judd is a Conservative politician aligned to the political right. They were once close connections, but now PJ (as he is known) shuns the disgraced Hobden. Hobden tells PJ that he thinks the kidnapping is an operation cooked up by the Service to discredit the political right. He overheard Taverner speaking with another politician about her intention to bring down the right; they were drunk and indiscreet. Hobden wants Judd to relay a message to the press that the Voice of Albion group “have been infiltrated by the intelligence services” (207) and that the whole exercise has been concocted. Judd plans to run for Prime Minister and Hobden supports this, knowing that Judd’s politics are far more right-wing than he publicly acknowledges. He blackmails Judd by claiming he has a copy of a photo of Judd giving a Nazi salute.
Meanwhile, Lamb meets with Diana Taverner, the person who answered Moody’s burner phone. He accuses her of being responsible for the shooting of Sid Baker. He also tells her that Moody is dead. She reveals her scheme: Tired of not getting credit for the successful but secret operations, she planted an agent who masterminded a kidnapping. She insists Hassan will not be beheaded. Instead, MI5 and Taverner will save him and look like public heroes. Taverner wanted Sid to steal Hobden’s files because she knows he overheard her talking about the operation at the bar. She needed to know what he might be planning. She admits there is a hitch in her plan: Hassan Ahmed’s uncle holds a senior position in Pakistan’s intelligence service. The stakes are now immeasurably higher.
Taverner reveals that she has a backup plan. She will send in the slow horses to rescue Hassan. If Lamb refuses, charges of treason against Catherine Standish in the wake of Charles Partner’s death will be revived—charges of which Catherine was never aware. Lamb agrees to send in his team, on the condition that Moody’s death will be covered up and Sid’s shooting will be recorded as a random crime. Everybody else involved will have immunity if something goes wrong.
Taverner makes a phone call and reports her disturbing conversation with Lamb to someone. Meanwhile, Judd instructs his assistant to place some calls.
Part 2, Chapter 11 Summary
Lamb returns to Slough House and informs his team that they will be rescuing Hassan Ahmed. River rides with Lamb to the location where Hassan is allegedly being held. He notes that Moody took something besides the bug from Lamb’s office: Lamb’s “flight fund,” an envelope with money and passports in case Lamb has to flee.
The kidnappers have heard the report that one of them is an undercover agent. Curly suspects Moe. Hassan hopes desperately that the police will find him and that his uncle’s connections might help with this. But his hope evaporates when the kidnappers force him up the stairs, and he feels certain they will kill him.
River, Min, Louise, and Lamb enter the house. Nobody is there. A severed head is on the kitchen table.
Part 2, Chapter 12 Summary
The severed head belongs to Alan Black, the embedded agent, aka Moe. They recognize him, as he was formerly a slow horse. Lamb takes everyone’s phones and throws them down the sewer. He tells the others to find Ho, Struan Loy, and White; he will get Catherine Standish himself. They are to meet at Blake’s grave as soon as possible.
Taverner places a phone call to her boss, Ingrid Tearney, after the head is found. She blames the incident on Lamb and his team. Tearney tells Taverner to bring in the slow horses. They will be blamed as rogue criminal agents, and there will be no reference to MI5 in any of the reports.
Louisa, Min, and River discuss the possibility that Lamb might turn on them and might not show up at the cemetery. They decide to take their chances with him rather than with Taverner. They split up to more efficiently gather the rest of the team.
Duffy has caught Loy, and Taverner prepares to question him. Taverner tells him to make sure the rest of the slow horses are caught but to be cautious in trying to secure Lamb.
The two remaining kidnappers, Curly and Larry, drive out of the city with Hassan after Curly beheaded Moe, aka Alan Black. Larry is in shock, but Curly is filled with glee. He believes in his cause, and he thinks his actions will make him a hero.
Part 2, Chapter 13 Summary
Hassan is now locked in the trunk of the car. He has ceased to hope that he will be rescued. After seeing the severed head on the kitchen table, “[t]he comedy voice in his head had fallen silent” (242).
After River leaves Min and Louisa, he steals an decrepit car and tries to fetch Kay White. When he arrives at her house he sees a Dog leading her to a waiting car.
Taverner is questioning Struan Loy about the activities in Slough House. She baits him with leading questions, insinuating that he can save himself and his career if he betrays Lamb.
Min and Louisa look for Roderick Ho. Taverner’s men have already tried to reach Ho, but they arrive at the wrong house; Ho has changed his address in the personnel files so as not to be easily found. Lamb also has the correct address, and the three meet there and then head for the graveyard. Ho takes his laptop.
Part 2, Chapters 9-13 Analysis
In this section, the clues, hints, and promises of the previous chapters start to be fulfilled. The slow horses do not seem so lethargic and isolated after all, developing the theme of Forgiveness, Redemption, and Second Chances. First, when Min Harper and Louisa Guy encounter the intruder at Slough House, they act swiftly and decisively: “anyone watching wouldn’t have guessed that either had recently succumbed to drink or lust, because both looked like sober joes as they slipped on to the landing again” (170). Their instincts are intact, and their training kicks in, despite the wasted years at Slough House and in spite of their intoxication and sexual arousal. Even Lamb, for all of his defensive derisiveness, seems to acknowledge that his team has skills. For example, of Roderick Ho, he says, “Ho has the people skills of a natterjack toad, but he knows his way around the ether” (179). Even though he is characteristically less than forthcoming about it, it is revealed that Lamb views Ho and the other slow horses as an asset.
Lamb also increasingly exhibits a sense of loyalty to his slow horses, which is a recognition of their surprising performance and a means to strengthen the theme of Allegiance, Betrayal, and Loyalty. After entrusting the rescue mission to them, albeit with a bit of coercion from Taverner, he leaps to their defense as soon as things go wrong. Lamb rescues River from the hospital after Sid is shot; he does not want the Dogs to get a chance to question or to implicate River in the incident. He also intends to protect Min and Louisa from the aftermath of Jed’s accidental death, suggesting that they tell the authorities that Jed was brandishing a weapon at them. Lamb exhibits a sense of loyalty to his slow horses, contemptuous though his expression may be. This is in direct contrast to Diana Taverner’s mode of operation, which involves sacrificing others in order to achieve her own aggrandizing ends. Lamb is particularly bothered by her use of the Slough House crew: “When you’re not co-opting my team, you’re subverting them,” he accuses her (191). It comes as little surprise when she openly betrays Lamb and his team shortly thereafter.
The novel has set up the expectation that Taverner intends to send in the slow horses for the hostage rescue as cover. It is a win-win for her, and the novel has shown her to be acutely if selfishly strategic. If the intervention goes wrong, as expected, she can blame Lamb, the disgruntled leader gone rogue with his team of inept agents. If it succeeds, her original plan will have worked. Lamb is reluctant to send in his team, but the novel has now shifted so that his motivation is reversed: Far from lacking confidence in the slow horses, he is keenly aware of the depth of Taverner’s capacity for conspiracy. However, she offers them something Lamb knows that they want: “Redemption.” If the operation goes well, the slow horses may have the opportunity to regain their status with Regent’s Park. In a hitherto uncharacteristic display of teamwork and democracy, Lamb openly asks the slow horses if they are willing to help, contrasting his earlier manipulative behavior. Lamb’s character demonstrates faith in them, prefiguring the chance for success and redemption. This behavior elicits a growing sense of camaraderie among the group, who begin to align themselves with Lamb and each other instead of with Taverner and Regent’s Park, as they previously did. This shift of perspective showing Regent’s Park as their common enemy is part of the novel’s treatment of betrayal and moral conflict. This shifting adds to the suspense and mystery of the novel and the thrill of guessing the next twist. When River says, “There was always something going on. And it wasn’t always possible, from the outside, to understand what it was” (217), Herron could be describing the reader’s experience.
The author also illuminates some of the competing ideologies that characterize the post–Cold War world, part of Nostalgia, Patriotism, and the Post–Cold War Period, in particular the ways in which definitions of patriotism can be factional and divisive. The novel exposes the hypocrisy of extremists who hide behind prevarication, and the journalist Robert Hobden, of the British National Party, seeks to reassure himself that his extremist views are “[n]othing to do with racism, whatever the liberal elite pretended. Nothing to do with hate, or repulsion at the sight of difference. Everything to do with character, and the need for national identity to assert itself” (187). The novel engages dramatic irony by showing how similar Hobden’s views are in fact to the abductors’: “Things used to be different,” the violent one christened Curly thinks, “and if the natural children of these islands were to enjoy their birthright, they had to be that way again” (238). Although Hobden plays the victim by blaming the “liberal elite,” he hides behind his elitist sense of superiority and uses his educated reasoning skills to justify the unjustifiable. In this section, the novel introduces Peter Judd, the apogee of this type of hypocrisy, prejudice, and exploitation. Judd conceals his extremist views in public in the hope of becoming prime minister, showing the very real threat that he poses to society.
