Slough House—Slough rhymes with cow—is where Britain’s MI5 sends intelligence officers it doesn’t want but won’t fire, in hope that the sheer drudgery of their assignments, combined with the dreadfulness of their boss, will lead those agents to quit. Some do. The ones who stick around are called “slow horses,” hence the title of this book.

Slow Horses opens with MI5 officer River Cartwright tracking a suspected terrorist through King’s Cross, one of London’s major railway stations. Unfortunately, the terrorist detonates a suicide vest before he can be apprehended, killing scores and causing millions in damage, billions in lost tourism revenue.

Just not in reality. The entire episode was a training episode taking place at King’s Cross. Yes, thousands of commuters were actually evacuated from the station, but other than that, no harm, no foul—except that Cartwright gets sent down to Slough House for crashing King’s Cross.

There, we might other denizens of this realm, which is governed by the rude, crude Cold War spymaster Jackson Lamb, who inherited his dominion for reasons that become clear only later in the novel.

The plot of Slow Horses centers on the kidnapping of a British subject, though by whom and for what reason is not immediately apparent. All that is known is that the kidnappers will decapitate him in 48 hours. Everyone naturally expects Muslim terrorists.

But here’s the thing: the victim is Muslim, but the terrorists are not. With everyone’s assumptions turned upside down, MI5 has the job of finding the victim before the kidnappers separate his head from his shoulders.

Then Slough House gets dragged into the mess in more ways than one, putting them in the crosshairs. The only solution? The slow horses need to outrace the Park—that is, Regent’s Park, where MI5 is headquartered—before they get stabbed in the back.

Slow Horses is the first in a series of novels by Mick Herron that focus on Slough House. It is a brilliant introduction to the characters and the series, and its plots are filled with enough twists to induce motion sickness. It’s a page-turner that keeps you in suspense to the end, marveling at the depths of deception spies are capable of. The dialogue is razor sharp. And the characters—especially Jackson Lamb—are sharply and hilariously drawn.

So, five stars from me. Read this book, then keep reading the entire series!

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