Contains spoilers both for this story and for The Secret Hours
Standing by the Wall is an Easter egg spectacular, which is no bad thing for a Christmas tale. It’s a short story, not really a novella, but it does three things in the Slough House / Slow Horses world created by Mick Herron. As such, you should read it after Bad Actors and before The Secret Hours.
The first thing we learn is that Roddy Ho’s Christmas movies are Die Hard, Die Hard 2 and Elf. He planned to watch them on Christmas Eve, depending on whether or not he got an invitation for office Christmas drinks (Struan Loy would have been delighted). Unlike Lamb and Catherine, who share an exchange about the old classic, Roddy hasn’t heard of It’s a Wonderful Life, and photoshopping out an unknown man from an old picture starts him wondering what the world would be like if the Rodster had never existed: ‘a duller, greyer, tone-deaf place, lacking in joy and spectacle’. Ho fondly imagines Louise living her life with an unknown, unexplainable sense of loss, and Lamb operating as though missing a limb. Of course, this fantasy fulfilment is the opposite exercise of what It’s a Wonderful Life is all about, and we can’t help but wonder whether Roddy, should he see the film, would associate most with George Bailey, Sam Wainwright or – as does Sparrow in Bad Actors – old man Potter.
River is back, pretending he is fully healed after his Novichok poisoning at the end of Slough House. He got one or two mentions in Bad Actors – just enough to know he was still alive but not whether he would ever return. He has had enough personal development to know not to bite when new horse Ashley Khan says that she is in the Park due to having been screwed over and not for her own mistakes.
But enjoyable as these elements are, the main impact of Standing by the Wall is to set us up for The Secret Hours, a book which features many Slough House characters although most of them are not outrightly named. The photograph that Molly and Lamb pass between them includes a third character, Otis, and there is a mention of an investigation, Monochrome, into previous activities. If you read Standing by the Wall you’ll be able to work out more quickly the Slough House identity of one of the characters.
The relationship between the main Slough House novels and the satellite content has been rich and enjoyable territory, with the novellas providing director’s-cut-like extra detail that comes in handy for understanding specific characters. Wall does something a little different: it is the bridge to a supposedly standalone novel. Herron is telling us that there’s enough of Slough House to keep us going until the ninth in the main series appears.
You won’t need to make much time for Standing by the Wall. One reason not to do so is that you’d like to come to The Secret Hours fresh. But the slow horses aren’t fresh, so what would be the point of that? Instead, lean into the true spirit of Christmas: Jackson Lamb Rudolph socks, each with a red nose peeping out.
Cafethinking 