‘The Secret Hours’ by Mick Herron    (2023) – 365 pages

I suppose the death of John le Carre created a vacuum in the writing of spy fiction that someone will have to fill. One of the likelier candidates to fill this spy vacuum is Mick Herron who has written several novels, one from which the television series “Slow Horses” was adapted.

Mick Herron’s latest work ‘The Secret Hours’, which I have just read, is a stand-alone spy thriller.

Having spent much of my work career in several seemingly unending bureaucracies, I much appreciated Mick Herron’s arch cynical humor about the ultimate bureaucracy, the M15 British Intelligence Agency.

A new inquiry, the Monochrome Inquiry, is investigating the historical overreach by the British Intelligence Service. The two main investigators are Griselda Fleet and Malcolm Kyle, both of whom come to believe that they have been named to the inquiry only so the Service can get rid of them. There are also two others named to the inquiry.

“Guy Fielding and John Moore, back-benchers both, were experienced committee sitters, happy to make up the numbers whenever warm buttocks were required on padded seats, provided the padding also applied to the expense accounts.”

Griselda Fleet is an old hand on these type of inquiries.

“She’d long been aware, for example, that those who have garnered more power than wise minds would have allotted them tend to think themselves above the reach of the law.”

At first, the progress of the Monochrome panel is very slow and halting. This gives author Mick Herron an opportunity to regale us with his humor regarding bureaucracies. We get a hilarious account of how bureaucracy actually works or doesn’t work, how the members of a bureaucracy achieve their goals or don’t achieve their goals.

“This was Westminster, and London Rules were in play, which – right below Never apologize, never explain – stated Never admit you’ve made a mistake.”

Along the way, we get lots of facetious wisdom.

“And then there were the endless complications of joining an organization whose watchword was secrecy, even if its prevailing ethos was obfuscation.”

We also get insights into the characters of people they meet.

“Somewhere inside that petulant, uptight young man was an arrogant asshole trying to get out.”

A man named Anthony Sparrow is described as “a man who wouldn’t need to be hungry to grind your dog into sausages”.

Later, the pace of the story speeds up to breakneck speed as all good spy stories must. The action moves to Berlin, and the inquiry pursues agency secrets from the time when the Berlin Wall came down.

‘The Secret Hours’ is a very humorous look at a vast bureaucracy that winds up with an engaging spy story.

Grade :    A