DDR: Slough House by Mick Herron

 

Eine Kleine A.I. Music there (⇑).

A bit of trepidation before cracking this one open. The first 7 Slough House books (6 novels and one compendium of novellas) were so entrancing, so compelling...2,367 pages in 20 days--an average of over 118 pages per day every day for three weeks in a not very empty schedule...but at couple of the novellas (the last two) and a few spots in the last novel curdled a bit in my mouth. So I'm hoping that those weren't cracks preparing a collapse. So few series things seem to hold up as they extend through time. Jo Nesbø's Harry Hole novels, which start out brilliant and turn to sludge. Marvel movies. Every comic book ever. Entropy takes hold. The horse falters, staggers, drops, gasps, rots.

So, yeah. Trepidation. I want this book to be good. REALLY good.

🙏 

🤞 

Day 1 (DDRD 2,612) December 24, 2024

Read to page 79. Busy day.

Well, here's a great epigraph: "The simplest way to explain the behavior of any bureaucratic organization is to assume that it is controlled by a cabal of its enemies." --Robert Conquest's third law of politics.

Having spent 1/3 of my life working for Jefferson County Public Schools, I can attest to the truth of this supposition.

"...political fog, as history has illustrated, is best dispelled by the waving of flags and banners, which usually foreshadows the use of truncheons and sticks." (30)

I Facebook-messaged Mick Herron. Yeah, I know, but I felt like giving it a shot. I may have been slightly high at the time. After the usual, I asked him if the (back) door to Slough house was ever locked. It's been bugging me. Don't expect an answer,  but hey...nothing ventured etc.

Day 2 (DDRD 2,613) 🎅🎄December 25, 2024🎄🎅

Read to page 163. Wouldn't have minded reading more, but hey, it's Christmas. 

Read more. To 174. Merry Christmas.

Day 3 (DDRD 2,614) December 26, 2024

Read to page 302, The End. And my trepidation (see above) have been dispelled. This novel really kicked 🫏 . And ended on a note that has me so fraught that I'm going to have to start Bad Actors immediadamntely.

So enough here.

A long time ago...1978-ish...I was sent with a team from the 101st Airborne Military Intelligence unit (yeah, yeah, I know) to Camp Hood, near Watertown, New York. In the depths of winter. The mission was overstaffed, though, so most of our team of Signal Security specialists had nothing to do for a week or two...other than stay in our barracks...which were unheated. I'd brought my boxed set of The Lord of the Rings trilogy with me, and I spent many an hour underneath all the blankets I could find, immersing myself in Tolkien's world. * At one point a friend and fellow useless Signal Security specialist,  Dave Turner, interrupted my reading to ask me a question. In my response, I referred to him as "Bilbo"--as in Bilbo Baggins. He looked a little hurt, and asked me why I'd called him a dildo. I explained, and we both had a good laugh. 

Ah, memories...pressed between the pages of ice cold sheets.

* Your tax dollars at work.