Contains very mild spoilers

The Slow Horses paradox goes like this: the uncelebrated spies of Slough House tend to get dispatched into adventure either because the popular guys at the Park wish it so, or because said guys have made a mess. If the beautiful Park people were as good as they thought, we might never read about the horses…and that wouldn’t bode well for a series of books in which they are the main characters. In order to hear about operations run solely by the Park, we need additional stories, and with The Catch Mick Herron gives us a novella that shows MI5 chief Diana Taverner at her most cunning and resourceful in order to cover up disgusting behaviour at the heart of the British establishment. 

By now, all the moving parts of Mick Herron’s created world are beginning to come together. The previous novella, The Drop, included characters who’d turn up in the main series of novels. But the situation isn’t clean. At the end of The Drop, John Bachelor moved into the apartment of deceased spook Solomon Dortmund, having failed and continuing to fail to tell MI5 of Dortmund’s death. This death could perhaps have been prevented if Richard Pynne had done his job properly (though Bachelor and Taverner are also complicit), and we’ve seen Pynne act disgracefully in Joe Country. So we aren’t too disappointed to see that he’s been cast out from his position as Taverner’s golden boy.

But we know something’s up. Turns out that Taverner knows full well that Bachelor is scamming the Service. And it is known that Bachelor has been bribed then fooled by Benny Manors, for whom Bachelor was supposed to provide pastoral care. So how come Bachelor, rather than say Pynne, is sent to make contact with Manors and desperately try to befriend him?

I don’t think it’s really a spoiler to say that Taverner’s operation is successful. It isn’t clear and in a sense doesn’t even matter for the reader what she’s trying to do until the last few pages. What’s more revealing is that even she is uncomfortable about the morality of what she’s tried to do. This story follows Joe Country which saw the libertine behaviour of a member of the royal family covered up, and here is said (but unnamed) royal carrying on just as before and in a case not dissimilar to one in real life that has had transatlantic political ramifications very recently. 

In order to protect the royal’s reputation, a blackmailer, a corrupt but incompetent Service agent and a corrupt but incompetent desk agent are moved like pawns, none seeing the whole picture. And we realise that these failures are kept on board precisely because they can be used should circumstances like this arise. (That said, I hope this isn’t the last we see of the hapless, friendless yet seemingly indestructible John Bachelor.) Herron is showing us that even when the Park run a great op, the effect is to spread disinformation to the British public about the people who rule over them. In another story, Jackson Lamb points out that should ethics be introduced into the secret service they might as well be shut down. But in The Catch Herron invites us to consider whom the Service is really serving. It was called Her Majesty’s Secret Service for a reason.

Check out all Cafethinking reviews of Slough House novels, novellas and short stories, plus episode reactions to series 5 of Slow Horses.