Dead lions

Mick Gerron has been called "the John Le Carré of our times" and the new hope of British literature, and has been compared to Raymond Chandler and Kingsley Amis, Evelyn Waugh and Graham Greene, Elmore Leonard and Joseph Heller. Gerron’s novels are “a funny, borderline farcical, amazingly cynical caricature of politicians, functionaries, internecine squabbling and the Great Game” (Booklist), and his heroes (“lame horses”, aka the weaklings from Slough Tower) are counterintelligence officers who have failed , punished “for addiction to drugs, alcohol or debauchery; for intrigue and betrayal; for dissatisfaction and doubts; and also for an unforgivable oversight.” Overseeing them is Jackson Lamb, “the Falstaff of our day” (Sunday Times) and “one of the most monstrous characters in modern literature” (Bernard Cornwell). In the second novel in the series, Dead Lions, an old acquaintance of Lamb's from his time in Berlin, a former informer named Dickie Bowe, dies on a bus near Oxford; and not only does his death look suspicious, but on his mobile phone Lam finds an unsent message with one word: “Cicadas.” This means that there is a possibility that the mythical agent network of deep secrecy is not so mythical. But MI5 has no time for that, counterintelligence is paralyzed by “an audit that is more reminiscent of the Inquisition,” and it’s up to Lamb and his “lame horses” to deal with the “Cicadas” and their mythical (or is it not mythical?) leader... In 2022, the “Slough Tower” series received a television incarnation: the Apple TV+ channel launched a series known in Russian as “Slow Horses.” Three seasons have already been released, there will be at least five in total. The role of Jackson Lam was played by Gary Oldman; the series also starred Jack Lowden, Olivia Cooke, Jonathan Pryce, Kristin Scott Thomas, and Christopher Cheung. The first season was directed by James Hawes (“Merlin”, “Black Mirror”, “Doctor Who”, “The Alienist”, “Raised by Wolves”).