Slow Horses
I’d enjoyed the le Carré books earlier in the year. The core of those I read were from a deeply analogue world. I wondered, could you do similar after the digital cut off? Or would it be like horror films, that have to invent a reason why our wonder devices stop working right before the claustrophobia creeps in.
Slow Horses was recommended to me as the solution, and it did a really interesting job. It mirrors le Carré’s sense of a fallible and human service. Though I think ultimately it may be less jaded about the whole venture. I’m not sure if it’ll leave its lighters on the floor.
The digital bits are probably the worst bit for me. Tech people get deployed a bit like wizards, with extraordinary powers and seemingly unlimited abilities. I think they’re deployed as a plot device to just join up how knowledge A can appear with person B. There’s very little interesting to be said about how tech has changed things beyond that. There was lots of fun tradecraft though, however the most enjoyable bits would have probably worked just as well in a 1970s novel.
So perhaps that’s the answer, if you want to do a racy spy novel, drop in a few tech wizards but center on your old school folk.
I suspect I’ll read more of the series next year.
Before "Slow Horses" I read: The Employees
After "Slow Horses" I read: Hayek's Bastards