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Loading... The Secret Hours (edition 2023)by Mick Herron (Author)
Work InformationThe Secret Hours by Mick Herron
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Sign up for LibraryThing to find out whether you'll like this book. No current Talk conversations about this book. It's a prequel backstory to the Slough House series. Difficult to get into, but the story picked up as it progressed. May be a challenge to understand if it's the first you've read/seen of the series. ( ) After an exciting first chapter, this one bogged down in a uncovering of the story via a bureaucratic committee hearing setup to fail. It seemed to grind on forever. Even after the pace picked up a bit with the retelling of earlier events in Cold War Berlin, I found it slow going and by the time I got to the end, I was just skimming the pages for the highlights. Some will find it interesting for the back story on characters from the Slough House series, but recommended for fans only. I've read all of those books, but found the previous entry and this one pretty tedious. The first half is all setup and a bit slow, but it kicks into a higher gear halfway through with the introduction of witness #137. Her tale of an assignment in Berlin in 1994 is soon revealed to include important backstory for characters in the main Slough House sequence, though it's not clear immediately who and/or how many they are, as they are all referred to with code names. Except David Cartwright, for some reason... The last few chapters come together in a truly satisfying way that takes the series forward in a way I did not expect given its billing as a standalone. I quite liked it! no reviews | add a review
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A gripping standalone spy thriller from the #1 Sunday Times bestselling author of Slow Horses, with a riveting reveal about a disastrous MI5 mission in Cold War Berlin--an absolute must-read for Slough House fans. New from the author of Slow Horses, now an Apple Original series from Apple TV+, starring Gary Oldman and Kristin Scott Thomas. Two years ago, a hostile Prime Minister launched the Monochrome inquiry, investigating "historical over-reaching" by the British Secret Service. Monochrome's mission was to ferret out any hint of misconduct by any MI5 officer--and allowed Griselda Fleet and Malcolm Kyle, the two civil servants seconded to the project, unfettered access to any and all confidential information in the Service archives in order to do so. But MI5's formidable First Desk did not become Britain's top spy by accident, and she has successfully thwarted the inquiry at every turn. Now the administration that created Monochrome has been ousted, the investigation is a total bust--and Griselda and Malcolm are stuck watching as their career prospects are washed away by the pounding London rain. Until the eve of Monochrome's shuttering, when an MI5 case file appears without explanation. It is the buried history of a classified operation in 1994 Berlin--an operation that ended in tragedy and scandal, whose cover-up has rewritten thirty years of Service history. The Secret Hours is a dazzling entry point into Mick Herron's body of work, a standalone spy thriller that is at once unnerving, poignant, and laugh-out-loud funny. It is also the breathtaking secret history that Slough House fans have been waiting for. No library descriptions found. |
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Google Books — Loading... GenresMelvil Decimal System (DDC)823.92Literature English English fiction Modern Period 2000-LC ClassificationRatingAverage:
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