‘The chaos of today’s world has seeped into the characters,’ says writer Mick Herron

Three years ago, the New Yorker magazine wondered whether Mick Herron was really the best spy writer of his generation, as critics claim. The conclusion was that the 62-year-old Englishman was at least the most amusing. The release in Brazil of “Slow Horses” and “Sleeping Lions”, the first two volumes of the “Slough House” series, is excellent news for lovers of detective literature.

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Building on the success of the series “Slow Horses”, inspired by the universe created by Herron, in its fifth season on Apple TV+, the publisher Intrínseca has maintained some titles in English. “Slough House” is the dump where disgraced British secret service agents are confined. “Slow Horses”, or “pangarés”, is slang meaning slow and outdated. The one who commands the legion of incompetents is the loathsome Jackson Lamb, played in the series by Gary Oldman.

“Slough House” has sold four million copies worldwide. Another of his literary forays, “Mystery on Cemetery Road,” was also adapted by AppleTV+, starring Ruth Wilson and Emma Thompson.

Herron never worked, like his predecessors Graham Greene, Ian “007” Fleming and John le Carré, for the British secret service. Married to a literary agent, he was an editor. He spoke by video call from his office, where he had just finished the ninth volume of “Slough House”, “City of Clowns” (in free translation), included on the list of the best works of the genre in 2025. It is the only play, he reveals, in which the cats Tommy and Scout are not included: their pets for almost five years deprive him of concentration when he works.

In the introduction to the Brazilian edition, you draw the ears of the critics who present you as “the new John le Carré (1931-2020)”. But he pays homage to him, in a coded way, in these two works.

The comparison happens with lazy regularity. I know people know his work and the parallel is of course flattering. But we don’t write about the same things.

It could be argued that you and he are two of the leading spy fiction writers of your generation, right?

I play for Robert Littell’s team (American author of novels such as “The Company”, about the CIA, which became a mini-series). He has something that is very dear to me: a sense of the absurd distilled by humor. Le Carré is no stranger to irony, but he uses it in a particular way. He doesn’t push the spy world into stupidity like Littell and me.

His books are set in the present, perhaps more absurd than the reality of the Cold War, the context of Le Carré’s work…

The chaos of today’s world has penetrated the characters. In a way, it was a blessing, because I felt my talent lay in creating seemingly implausible plots. But I would be incapable of writing characters as ridiculous as certain leaders who have governed us. Monsters. Monster caricatures. Absurdity literally reigned over us. And my literature has become a testimony to this moment of ours.

Critics saw his talentless spies as a commentary on Britain’s decadence.

They have become a reflection on the divorce between the United Kingdom and the European Union. I wrote these first two translated volumes in Brazil in 2010 and 2013, and the Brexit referendum took place in 2016. A character defends the inevitability of an insular Britain once again turned in on itself, something that was already in the collective unconscious, even if those around me believed until the moment of the vote that it was crazy. We should have paid attention to our surroundings. Fifteen years later, I see this character again and I understand with sadness that he was right. The extremes have moved towards the center.

Its origin is Catholic. Did this play a role in creating the purgatory your spies live in in “Slough House”?

Yes and no. They are confined to work in a purgatory or limbo. But they will never leave. For them, redemption, as defined by Catholicism, is not an option.

And faced with geopolitical limbo, is there a way out? How do you see Brexit today?

It was a resounding failure. We Brits have lost around £100 billion. It was an act of collective madness. We are living our purgatory. I wish we could go back to Europe, but that won’t happen in my generation.

What do you like most about “Slow Horses”, the audiovisual series?

The series’ creative team is made up of some of the books’ earliest fans. I’m an executive producer, a consultant, I’ve done guest appearances, I work in the writers’ room. I realized they wanted to do an accurate representation of what I had written. But there are situations when the plot changes, the environment is different. Because it’s these changes that I like the most, that surprise me, especially since I already knew everything else by heart. I also realize that my books have moved away from what we see on the screen.

Reading is a different experience than watching a series. There is another job than following the screen from your chair. Now I care about it even more. But I’m always impressed by how the characters and the actors who play them resemble the ones I created, including their temperament and manner of being. And then we have to talk about Gary Oldman.

Gary Oldman. Getting better and better in the new season of “Slow Horses”, on AppleTV+

We need to talk about Sir Gary Oldman…

It’s true, Jackson Lamb, who would have thought it, is now a Sir (laughs). Gary is out of this world. He created movements, mannerisms, that he hadn’t even thought of for the character. I love seeing what you do. But I never took what he created into the books. Except once: he sent me a photo he took of his father-in-law’s socks. Captioned: “Mick, who does this remind you of? » The father-in-law sews up the holes in the old socks he doesn’t want to let go with adhesive tape. Then it was bigger than me. I took the socks to the books (laughs).

On social networks, failure has become a testimony of incompetence. Was one of the secrets of the books’ success going against the Americanization of our daily lives?

There is something very British about paying attention to the downtrodden, the downtrodden, the marginalized, away from the margarine propaganda people. We all have difficult days. My characters have it in spades. Books may have served as an escape from the dictatorship of smiles, but I must admit, even to be consistent, that it took them a while to become popular with people. Our conversation made me think that there is another characteristic of my writing in these fast-paced times.

There are a lot of people who write with their attention focused on a frenetic action sequence. I really like devoting myself to the characters, thinking about them, what they think and feel.

What were the books of your life?

The ones I read in my late teens and early adulthood. It trained me. At the English language faculty, the classics. I read all of Jane Austen and Charles Dickens. Before, in high school, all the thrillers, Agatha Christie, John Steinbeck, Muriel Spark and, of course, F. Scott Fitzgerald, who faced failure like few others.