Book Review: “The Secret Hours” by Mick Herron

The Secret Hours by Mick Herron

Hooray!  Another novel from Mick Herron. 

It’s not technically a Slow Horses novel, but it does involve the service and the back story of where they came from.  So, yeah, I’m there for it.

As usual, Her Majesty’s realm (she’s still alive at the time of the story) is in grave peril, and her secret service stands between Britain and disaster.  And, as usual in Herron’s stories, the primary perils seem to be from Her Majesty’s own government.

Riffing on real life events, the service is facing outsourcing.

These policies generally don’t work well for anyone except a few contractors.  But outsourcing the functions of the secret service is utterly nuts. 

And, not surprisingly, the process has attracted the worst sort of parties.  Parties who want access to the secrets and control over who learns of them. 

Not coincidently, the lunatic in number 10 has launched an open ended probe of wrongdoing by the secret service, looking for leverage.   The PM has been tossed out, and the probe has been stymied by First Desk.  But it continues to operate, for little purpose.  Until someone feeds it an actual secret worth probing.

This triggers a reaction from someone who needs to keep that information secret.  If the purpose of the leak was to poke a tiger, then it succeeded.

As the intrepid bureaucrats plug on with their duties, dangerous events unfold.  And we learn more of what happened in Berlin, back in the day.

This is what we expect from Mick Herron. What more needs to be said.

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1. Mick Herron, The Secret Hours, New York, Soho Press, 2023.

Sunday Book Reviews

First Quarter Roundup 2023

This was the beginning of the tenth year of daily blogging.  Excitement builds, as we count down to the tenth anniversary….

The blog continues as usual. Robots. Dinosaurs. Cryptocurrencies. Quite a bit of coverage of Earth’s Cryosphere.  “Hot topics.”  (Get it?)

Inevitably, there has been a burst of interest in ChatGPT and its competitors.

Which reminds me:  a friend asked ChatGPT about me.  I hit the jackpot!  According to ChatGPT, I won the Gordon Bell Prize!

(emphasis added)

What do you know about Bob McGrath at NCSA?

Bob McGrath is a researcher at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA) at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He is currently the Technical Program Director for the National Research Platform (NRP), which is a project aimed at creating a national cyberinfrastructure platform to support collaborative research across a wide range of domains. McGrath has been involved in the development of many important computing systems, cyberinfrastructure projects, and scientific applications, and he is particularly interested in the intersection of computing, data analysis, and scientific research. He has also been a key contributor to national and international initiatives that focus on cyberinfrastructure and advanced computing, including the US National Science Foundation’s Information and Intelligent Systems Division’s Advisory Committee and the Global Grid Forum. McGrath has received numerous awards for his work, including the Gordon Bell Prize for Supercomputing in 2001.

(Please note:  Before you get all riled up, almost nothing in the above information is correct.  Please don’t get mad at me because ChatGPT tells lies about me.)

(And no, I have nothing to do with the National Research Program. They’ve never heard of me, and I’ve never heard of them.)

Comment:  All this chatter about “will ChatGPT take my job” seems kind of premature.  I mean, unless your job requires confidently producing wrong answers, what do you have to worry about?

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Band Names

As always, I have noted some Dave Barry Tribute “Great Names for a Band”.  These phrases were all found in real, I-am-not-making-this-up, science and technical articles.

“Fayetteville Lacewing”
“Nonflaking percussive activities”
“The Swarmalators”
“Non-uniform chiral”
“Non-chiral”
“Bosonic Code”
“Decoherence”
“Bit-flip code”

Books

This quarter I discussed 15 books.

Non-Fiction

American Inheritance by Edward J. Larson
Inventing the World by Meredith F. Small
Meade at Gettysburg by Kent Masterson Brown

Fiction

Murder Your Employer by Rupert Holmes
Eversion by Alastair Reynolds
Stone Blind by Natalie Haynes
The Last Voice You Hear by Mick Herron
Standing By The Wall by Mick Herron
Down Cemetery Road by Mick Herron
Blitz by Daniel O’Malley
Dr. No by Percival Everett
Before Your Memory Fades by Toshikazu Kawaguchi
Babel by R. F Kuang
The Maltese Iguana by Tim Dorsey
After Sappho by Selby Wynn Schwartz

Book Review: “The Last Voice You Hear” by Mick Herron

The Last Voice You Hear by Mick Herron

This was a sequel to Down Cemetery Road, originally published in 2003, reprinted in the US following the success of the Slow Horses.  The story picks up Zoë (Not Zoe) Boehm’s life after the traumatic earlier events.  We also learn a little about what happened to Sarah.

This story is grim and Noir, with enough contemporary references to be even more unpleasant.  The combination of sexual predation, racist violence, police misconduct, and media trashing is not fun to read, even with out the tense violence and personal danger.

In the Noir tradition, Zoë is the last honest woman in town, and immediately rushes to the defense of the weak (even if they aren’t always innocent).  This is a good way to get killed. 

Frankly, the “mystery” isn’t all that hard to solve.  The reader figures it out, and so does Zoë.  The main question is, what should and can be done about it?  Any sensible person would try to run away as fast as possible, but that’s not the Noir way, is it?

As in other very early works, Herron’s style here is hard to read.  He relentlessly builds and releases tension, over and over.  It’s exhausting.  His later works are way more readable (as well as funnier).

In this story Herron shows us that Checkov’s rule about guns also applies to large birds:  if you show the reader an ostrich in Chapter 5, it’s going to get loose in Chapter 7.

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1. Mick Herron, The Last Voice You Hear, New York, Soho, 2015.

Sunday Book Reviews

Book Review: “Standing By The Wall” by Mick Herron

Standing By The Wall by Mick Herron

In 2022, I caught up with all of Mick Herron’s Slow Horses novels, and even some other stuff. But I had not tracked down his short fiction, until now.

Standing by the Wall is the complete collection of the novellas about the Slow Horses, plus a new piece set after the latest novel (Bad Actors (2022)).  So now I’m caught up.

The stories are what you would expect.  The main drawback is that if you have read the novels, then you know what happened before and after these stories, so there can be no surprise endings and not much plot twisting.

But you should read them for the fun of reading Herron and following the Slow Horses and the secret service in Britain’s waning years.

Even better, the last story of the collection is new, and follows on after the grim and sad ending of Bad Actors.  A bit of seasonal cheer at the Shough House!?  A bit of good news.  A hint about some mysterious personal history.  And some happy holiday thoughts inside Rodney’s head. 

And no one dies in the novella—that’s nice for a change!

Long story short, this is pretty much what you would expect.

It’ll hold us while we wait for more.

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1. Mick Herron, Standing By The Wall: The Collected Slough House Novellas, New York, Soho Press, 2022.

Sunday Book Revdiews

Book Review: “Down Cemetery Road” by Mick Herron

Down Cemetery Road by Mick Herron

I’ve become quite a fan of Mick Herron’s Slow Horses.   Cemetery Road is earlier work, before Slow Horses, It was not a giant hit.

I believe this was his first published book, and it shows. 

Herron’s recent fiction is marked by some crazy plots, extreme danger, and unpredictable twists. His early book has all these elements, but nothing is as smooth or clever. His later works are better in many ways, though it is difficult to articulate exactly. Just better.

But with hindsight, we can see the talent shining through.  There are many touches we see in the later works: tension and twists, the noir sensibility toward the landscape and common life, a seriously bad attitude about pretty much everything except personal loyalty and friendship.

Anyway.

The story is set at the beginning of the second Iraq invasion, which is a long, long time ago now.  It’s actually surprising how well the “slice of life” holds up, considering.  The plot device is absurd, of course, though that’s really part of the point.

Plucky “bored housewife” Sarah is dragged into horrible and violent events.  Soon enough, people are dead and she is in mortal danger.  Her husband shows his true colors, and her “boring” world goes crazy.  With a little help from friends and even people she doesn’t like, she resolves to untangle the mystery, protect the innocent, and punish the wicked. 

In other words, she goes noir on their ass.

This story is set in Oxford (at least initially).  With yet more hindsight, it is interesting to read the descriptions of suburban life in Oxford after reading Jill Lepore’s profile in The New Yorker [2].  The profile makes me think that this first novel has considerable autobiographical elements.  (The Slow Horses is, as far as anyone knows, not autobiographical at all.   As far as anyone knows.)

There are several more “Oxford” stories that I haven’t read.  I am curious what happens next.

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1. Mick Herron, Down Cemetery Road, New York, Soho Press, 2003.
2. Jill Lepore, Is Mick Herron the Best Spy Novelist of His Generation?, in The New Yorker. 2022, Conde Nast: New York. https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2022/12/05/is-mick-herron-the-best-spy-novelist-of-his-generation

Sunday Book Reviews

Wrapping Up 2022

It’s the end of the year, time to look back. 

This year marked the ninth year of daily blogging!  That’s crazy, not to mention pointless.  Literally no one asked for it. : – (

But you got it anyway.

Coverage continues about the same.  Dinosaurs and Robots.  Cryptocurrency and Quantum Computing.  Bugs (i.e., software bugs). 

And weekly book reviews.

In other news…

I’ll note that this year I shutdown my never really used twitter account—I was a trend leader in not using twitter!

I also shutdown and cleaned out all of my NFTs and crypto stuff.  These were basically experiments, intended to see how stuff works.  Again, I’m leading the trend, walking away from NFTs and crypto. Be smart. Walk away now.

And, after wanting to do it all my life, I installed solar panels!  Hey, look at me!  I’m a power company!  There is an app, natch, which tells me that I have generated 1.3MWhr of pure, clean, yummy solar electricity since June 21.  A-a-a-h!  Refreshing!

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Best Robot of the Year

I haven’t really been rating robots, but I realized that mostly I blog about robots that capture my childish sense of wonder.  Cool robots.  Weird robots.  Outstanding robots.

So, looking over the posts this year, what is the best robot of 2022 in this blog?

Obviously, the Ingenuity Mars Copter is in a category of its own! 

I mean it’s (a) real and (b) flying on Mars!!!!  Flying! On Mars!  This is what robots are supposed to be!

Down here on Earth, there are lots and lots and lots of robots and robot projects.  I’ll call attention to a few that stand out by not following the herd:

• Ibex – I want a robot I can ride.  With horns!
• Wheelbot – how does this even work?  It’s magical.
• Volodrone – one of the winners in the “that’s not big enough!” department!

But I’m going to tip my hat to the prohibitive favorite: The land of Real Gundam.

As my post indicated:  the purpose of this device is to BE AWESOME.  Why did we build it?  BECAUSE WE COULD.

Now THAT’S what I call a robot!

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Dave Barry Tribute Band Names

As always, I noted ideas for band names, taken from real science and technology articles.

Let me pick a couple of favorites:

Trilobite Eyes
Fluidic innervation

Most of this years list:

Ankylosaur’s Tail-Club
Ankylosaur’s Hair Club
Leidenfrost effect
Structured Thermal Armour
Embayment
Foehn wind 
Fluidic innervation
Sensorize
Ultrafast
Energy exchange
Two single Rydbergs
A jumping reaction wheel unicycle
Non-holonomic
Under-actuated dynamics
Two unstable degrees of freedom
Self-erection
Disturbance rejection
While balancing
Entanglement purification
Doubling architecture
Quantum memories
Entanglement fidelities
Brain slosh reductions (This should be a cocktail)
Contactless Fabrication
Full Acoustic Trapping
Elongated Parts
Speculative Side-channel Attack
A Forward Speculative Interference Attack
Reorder Buffer Contention
Speculation-invariant instructions
Delay-on-miss
Trilobite Eyes
Metalens
Extreme Depth of Field
Boasts Huge

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Books

As always, I read continuously and posted weekly book reviews.  This year I reviewed 22 non-fiction and 55 fiction.

Some Best Books

This year I read most of new fav Mick Herron’s Slough House, as well as recurring favs Stross, Aaronovitch, etc.

Special mention for The Kaiju Preservation Society by John Scalzi– because it’s such a pro-nerd fantasy.  There are plenty of stories by nerds and for nerds, but not so many about nerds.  Heroic nerds! 

Non-fiction of note:  Legacy of Violence by Caroline Elkins. As I wrote, “Hit ‘em again, Elkins!”, I say. “Let me hold your coat while you put the boot in!” 

Special mention for: Math Without Numbers – super great math book, and remarkably easy to understand. I gave this as gift.

All the reviews in loose chronological order.

Q1

Fiction

Anthem by Noah Hawley
Quantum of Nightmares by Charles Stross
Escape From Yokai Landby Charles Stross
Before the Coffee Gets Cold by Toshikazu Kawaguchi
Tales from the Café by Toshikazu Kawaguchi
The Goodbye Coast by Joe Ide
Persephone Station by Stina Leicht
Mermaid Confidential by Tim Dorsey
Daisy Jones & The Six by Taylor Jenkins Reid
Once Upon A Time In Hollywood by Quentin Tarantino
Century Rain by Alastair Reynolds
To Sleep in a Sea of Stars by Christopher Paolini
D (A Tale of Two Worlds) by Michel Faber
Creative Types by Tom Bissell
White on White by Ayşegül Savaş
Harrow by Joy Williams
Fan Fiction by Brent Spiner
Constance Verity Destroys the Universe by A. Lee Martinez
The Kaiju Preservation Societyby John Scalzi

Non-Fiction

Treasured by Christina Riggs
Spooked: The Trump Dossier, Black Cube, and the Rise of Private Spies by Barry Meier
The Modern Detective by Tyler Maroney
The 1619 Project ed. by Nikole Hannah-Jones, Caitlin Roper, Ilena Silverman, and Jake Silverstein
Math Without Numbers by Milo Beckman
Otherlands by Thomas Halliday

Q2

Fiction

Glitterati by Oliver K. Langmead
Razzmatazz by Christopher Moore
Bad Actors by Mick Herron
Slough House by Mick Herron
This Time Tomorrow by Emma Straub
Book of the Night by Holly Black
Siren Queen by Nghi Vo
Sea of Tranquility by Emily St. John Mandel
The Good Wife of Bath by Karen Brooks
The Impossible Us by Sarah Lotz
Amongst Our Weapons by Ben Aaronovitch
Portrait of a Thief by Grace D. Li
Out There by Kate Folk
Battle of the Linguist Mages by Scotto Moore
The Paradox Hotel by Rob Hart
The Left-handed Twin by Thomas Perry

Non Fiction

How to Take Over the World by Ryan North
The Method by Isaac Butler
Origin by Jennifer Raff
Legacy of Violence by Caroline Elkins
Seven Games by Oliver Roeder
Pandora’s Jar by Natalie Haynes
Ways and Means by Roger Lowenstein
What the Ermine Saw by Eden Collinsworth
The Pope at War by David I. Kertzer

Q3

Fiction

Total by Rebecca Miller
Calling for a Blanket Dance by Oscar Hokeah
NSFW by Isabel Kaplan
The Pink Hotel by Liska Jacobs
The Longcut by Emily Hall
An Honest Living by Dwyer Murphy
The Daughter of Doctor Moreau by Sylvia Moreno-Garcia
Bone Silence by Alastair Reynolds
Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin
The Absolute by Daniel Duebel
The 22 Murders of Madison May by Max Barry
Slow Horses by Mick Herron
Spook Street by Mick Herron
Real Tigers by Mick Herron
Dead Lions by Mick Herron

Non-Fiction

The Last Days of the Dinosaurs by Riley Black
Bad Mexicans by Kelly Lytle Hernández
A Quantum Life by Hakeem Oluseyi
The Swerve by Stephen Greenblatt

Q4

Fiction

A Restless Truth by Freya Marske
The World We Make by N. K. Jemisin
The Oracle of Maracoor by Gregory Maguire
The Book of Goose by Yiyun Li
The Furthest Station by Ben Aaronovitch
Melancholy of Mechagirl by Catherynne M. Valente      
Astro-Nuts by Logan J. Hunder
The Golden Enclaves by Naomi Novik
August Kitko and the Mechas from Space by Alex White
Joe Country by Mick Herron
London Rules by Mick Herron
Sweet, Soft, Plenty Rhythm by Laura Warrell
Viviana Valentine Gets Her Man by Emily S. Edwards
Secret Music at Tordesillas by Marjorie Sandor

Non fiction

Survival of the Richest by Douglas Rushkoff
Indigenous Continent by Pekka Hämäläinen
Magnificent Rebels by Andrea Wulf

Book Review: “Joe Country” by Mick Herron

Joe Country by Mick Herron

Book 6 of the slow horses is more of what we expect.

My new favorite quote from First Desk Diana Taverner:

“For the record, I’m not aware of any events having taken place in Wales. Or anywhere else.” 

Brexit is being done, which means that Europe is now foreign territory.  As in, say, German intelligence infiltrating the UK’s Brexit committee.  My new favorite quote from Jackson Lamb: “It’s almost like they don’t believe we can f* that one up by ourselves.”

At Slough House ghosts abound, of course, and regrets.  There is a lot of loss and sadness.  This story is very dark. 

And, of course, the UK government and MI5 are conspiring against themselves.  Plus, there are wicked men on the move.  So, as usual, the slow horses are dragged into a mess that turns lethal.

They’re out in Joe Country where stuff happens.  People die, good and bad people.  Many of the wicked walk free.

Just another week at Slough House.

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1. Mick Herron, Joe Country, New York, Soho Press, 2019.

Sunday Book Reviews

Book Review: “London Rules” by Mick Herron

London Rules by Mick Herron

Yet another slow horses episode, and yet another major screw up.

In post-Brexit London, the slow horses actually don’t seem quite so hopeless.  Sure, they are hopeless, but not quite so totally hopeless.

As fans of the slow horses (the slow cavalry?)  know, “London Rules” means “cover your arse”, i.e., from your own side.  As usual, the government, wanna be PMs and mayors, and the secret service are tussling for position and power.  The slow horses aren’t really allowed to play these games, of course.

In addition to the threats from within, the nation faces yet another terror attack, and the security services are scrambling to figure out who the maniacs are this time.

Unfortunately, slow horse Roddy Ho has gormlessly walked in it, and is trampling it all over.  His detention for treason drags the slow horses into the game, like it or not.  Which leads to further catastrophe. 

If the slow horses manage to survive, they face prison and dissolution of Slough House.

Oh, and don’t forget the terrorists are still out there.

Just another day at Slough House.

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1. Mick Herron, London Rules, New York, Soho Crime, 2017.

Sunday Book Reviews

Third Quarter Roundup

Happy October, almost.

The blog rolls on!

Just because nobody reads it doesn’t mean I will stop posting.

Robots! Dinosaurs! The Cryosphere! El Salvador—The Bitcoin project!

Band names

It was a great quarter for the Dave Barry Tribute Great Names For A Band.  All of these phrases are torn from real science and technical papers!

Fluidic innervation
Sensorize
Ultrafast
Energy exchange
Two single Rydbergs
Timescale
A jumping reaction wheel unicycle
Non-holonomic
Under-actuated dynamics,
Two unstable degrees of freedom
Self-erection
Disturbance rejection
While balancing
Entanglement purification
Doubling architecture
Quantum memories
Entanglement fidelities
Brain slosh reductions (Or a cocktail?)
Contactless Fabrication
Full Acoustic Trapping
Elongated Parts
Speculative Side-channel Attack
A Forward Speculative Interference Attack
Reorder Buffer Contention
Speculation-invariant instructions
Delay-on-miss

Books

As always, I read and briefly reviewed books every week. This quarter I mentioned 15 fiction and 4 non-fiction. Mostly newly published books.

This summer I read most of the rest of Mick Herron’s Slough House, four of the novels are in the list, another two will be reviewed in coming days.

Fiction

Total by Rebecca Miller
Calling for a Blanket Dance by Oscar Hokeah
NSFW by Isabel Kaplan
The Pink Hotel by Liska Jacobs
The Longcut by Emily Hall
An Honest Living by Dwyer Murphy
The Daughter of Doctor Moreau by Sylvia Moreno-Garcia
Bone Silence by Alastair Reynolds
Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin
The Absolute by Daniel Duebel
The 22 Murders of Madison May by Max Barry
Slow Horses by Mick Herron
Spook Street by Mick Herron
Real Tigers by Mick Herron
Dead Lions by Mick Herron

Non-Fiction

The Last Days of the Dinosaurs by Riley Black
Bad Mexicans by Kelly Lytle Hernández
A Quantum Life by Hakeem Oluseyi
The Swerve by Stephen Greenblatt

Book Review: “Spook Street” by Mick Herron

Spook Street by Mick Herron

Book 4 of the slow horses is more of what we expect.

Something happens. What do you do?

(a)  Follow procedure, call it in, and wait for backup or,

 (b) Hare off on your own, without telling anyone or preparing in any way

If you have read these stories, you know that option ‘B’ is the slow horse way.

In addition to the usual maneuvering at headquarters (“London Rules”), the old spy David Cartwright is getting senile, which is a huge, huge problem because he may forget what he’s not supposed to talk about. 

So when the elder Cartwright is threatened, slow horse River Cartwright wonders just who might want to hush him up.  It’s a reasonable possibility that it is his own service, which means he can trust no one.

The older Cartwright did a lot of nasty stuff in his career, and a lot of it was simply bonkers by any non-cold war standard.  So it’s not good news when his past comes back.  Not good news at all.

Stuff happens.  People get hurt.  River Cartwright learns a bunch of painful stuff about his grandfather (and himself). 

Once again the slow horses have to move fast to save themselves, their service, and the nation.

You know it’s a desperate situation when everything depends on Slough House!

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1. Mick Herron, Spook Street, New York, Soho Press, 2017.

Sunday Book Reviews