What a good spy I would be, if I had a good master

Optimism does not seem like a spy trait, but it seems likely that few espionage professionals are more pessimistic than those created by Mick Herron. ‘In the country of spies’ (Salamandra, 2024)these helpless and hopeless characters also have to move around a United Kingdom mired in the worst hangover since the end of the Second World War: the Brexit party has left the once proud nation exposed to the cruel reflection of the mirror of disaster, one that It shows his miseries and predicts a future that is not very honorable and not at all hopeful. Nor is it news for Herron’s stable of slow horses, accustomed to living in the midst of ignominy and contempt. ANDThis is already the sixth installment of a saga that has made Herron the favorite of fans of the espionage genre.and far from settling into previous achievements, the British writer has pressed the accelerator on this exemplary thriller.

‘In the Land of Spies’ respects all the features already typical of the saga starring those seedy and marginalized spies that MI5 has exiled in the Swamp Housethat infernal limbo in which a gang of misfits suffer under the orders of Jack Lamb, a spy master at the antipodes of John le Carré’s George Smiley – Lamb was indeed a great agent in the Cold War, and in his own way he continues being, but hidden in kilos of grease and dirt, and with manners more typical of a hooligan that adorns with flatulence, bad mood and worse smell. Of course, the fact that in its television version he was played brilliantly by Gary Oldman has helped his growing popularity among Spanish readers – Oldman, who was also Smiley in the extraordinary film ‘El topo’ (2011) -.

«In the House of the Ciénaga, the London post for disgraced M15 spies, Memories of past times surface, stir, all of them bad. In Regent’s Park, Diana Taverner’s mandate also encounters difficulties. If he wants to make the Service fit for purpose, he may have to make deals with an old and familiar demon… And now that winter takes hold, Jackson Lamb would prefer to sit still and meditate in peace, but the dark shadows of his past catch up with him. So when a known traitor, the man responsible for killing one of his slow horses, goes on the run, Lamb sends the troops to even the score, but not everyone will return. That is the synopsis offered by the publisher. Let’s add that, on this occasion, the main action moves to snowy Wales, where blood will flow as a result of London’s machinations. Of course, everything happens again in just a couple of days, in a new example of the Herron’s extraordinary ability to compress the actionand to dose it towards a tense and heart-stopping ending -because these novels are thrillers, and we must never forget that-.

If something distinguishes this novel, it is the rabid criticism of the privileges and meanness of the bastions of the British elites, that greedy and soulless caste that governs a ship that they themselves have sunk and docked. It is something that has been present throughout the saga, but this time the criticism is even harsher. The excesses of the considered superior classes – for themselves, let us not forget – are as vile as they are stupid, and they contrast with the injustices they sow in their wake, staining the most innocent of a society from which they are stealing its future – here we see that damage in the adolescents whom they pervert with their mere presence.

What distinguishes these Herron novels from the great mass of thrillers that still flood airport kiosks is the extraordinary gallery of characters that populate their plots, and how they triumph by reflecting the tone of the society they portray. To this we must add that Herron knows how to write: «The owl flew out of the barn screeching with the tips of its wings on fire. For a moment, silhouetted against the emptiness of the sky, she looked like a dying angel singed by her own divinity, but an instant later she was nothing more than a burnt shell that fell plummeting onto the nearby trees. The man wondered if that bird was going to start a fire in the forest, but the trees were covered in a thick layer of snow, and any spark that survived the fall would be extinguished immediately. “He turned toward the barn again just as the roof collapsed in a cloud of dust.” In its own way, it was a beautiful sight, at least if you were into that sort of thing.

In the country of spies

Author: Mick Herron

Editorial: Salamander

Translation: Antonio Padilla

Pages: 400

Precio: 20,90 €