"A bogeyman. Smoke and a whisper, nothing more. If information was hard currency, the best we had on Popov was an IOU. Nobody ever laid a finger on him, and that was because he didn’t exist.”
— David Cartwright
Sequel to Slow Horses and second of the Jackson Lamb spy novels.
A retired spy dies on a bus, in questionable circumstances, and nobody except Jackson Lamb seems to care.
But with MI5 under close political scrutiny, his Slough House team is a little depleted, with two of them ‘unofficially’ on loan to look after a visiting Russian oligarch.
Things don’t seem to add up. And perhaps a ghost story from the last days of the cold war has resurfaced to haunt England.
The book was adapted into the second season of the Slow Horses series.
Dead Lions contains examples of:
- Alas, Poor Villain: Katinsky’s final confrontation with River. He’s dying of liver cancer and his final plan - revenge for the deaths the British caused in his home town - has abruptly failed because every last one of his deep cover agents betrayed him. He suddenly looks old, tired and slightly bewildered. And then he commits suicide.
- Ambiguously Gay: When under investigation for punching her stalker, Shirley Dander tells MI5 she’s gay, in the hope it’ll make it harder for them to sack her. Marcus later asks if this was actually true and Shirley doesn’t answer. The narration mentions her partner, but never gives a name or gender for them.
- Asshole Victim: It’s hard to get too sad when Fake Ultimate Hero ’Spider’ Webb is shot by Pashkin’s thugs.
- Badass Boast: There may be a policeman present, but when Lamb’s patience wears thin, he’s very clear in stating that the guy he’s talking to will have a broken nose long before the policeman intervenes.
- Bad Boss: Pashkin. Piotr gets a bullet in the head when he’s no longer needed for the robbery.
- Becoming the Mask: The ‘Cicadas’, the deep cover agents settled in Upshott, are enjoying their new lives and don’t respond to Katinsky’s orders
- Bluff the Imposter: Nikolai Katinsky actually manages to pull this one on Jackson Lamb. Which is an early hint that Katinsky is more than he appears to be.
- Deep Cover Agent: The 'cicada' families who moved to Upshott, Soviet sleeper agents who've been waiting to be reactivated. At least in theory. In practice, they've Become The Mask
- Enemy Mine: Briefly and jokingly with Jackson Lamb and MI5’s second desk ‘Lady Di’ Taverner. They really don’t like each other, but they dislike MI5 first desk Ingrid Tearney even more. Jackson flippantly offers to arrange her assassination - which prompts Taverner to thank him for his kindness.
- Former Regime Personnel: Andrei Chernitsky. Which necessitates a deal between Katinsky and ‘Pashkin’ to hire him back.
- Functional Addict:
- Shirley Dander has a cocaine habit.
- Marcus Longridge has a gambling problem. Although he doesn’t see it as a problem.
- Genre Savvy: Min Harper is wary of getting caught up in a Regents Park operation, not least because he remembers what happened last time. And this time it does get him killed.
- He Knows Too Much: The reason for Min Harper’s murder.
- Hidden Weapons:
- Arkady Pashkin smuggles a gun into the Needle meeting via his briefcase.
- And Marcus Longridge - who’s seen that trick coming - already has one in the room, taped under the table.
- Inspiration Nod: Louisa starts swearing about Die Hard when she realises what’s really going on with Pashkin.
- Invented Individual:
- Alexander Popov - the O.B. describes him as “a fictional spymaster, running his own fictional network”. Which doesn’t stop his creator, Katinsky, from using the Popov myth to get Dickie Bow killed and launch his final scheme.
- Arkady Pashkin, the fake Russian oligarch created solely to facilitate a robbery, also qualifies.
- And there are strong hints that Katinsky himself falls into this category. Whoever he was before the fall of the USSR, he wasn’t a cipher clerk named Katinsky. And the Katinsky name only appeared on a deliberately leaked rota.
- It's Personal: Louisa Guy after Min Harper’s murder.
- Jack Bauer Interrogation Technique: We don’t see it, but Nick Duffy seems to use this approach on Rebecca Mitchell. His knuckles are scraped red when he reappears to brief Lamb.
- The Last Dance: Katinsky’s motivation for at least part of the scheme. He’s dying of liver cancer and settling a very old score.
- Long Game: Katinsky’s scheme has this in spades.
- Creating and leaking a paper trail for the existence of KGB cipher clerk “Nikolai Katinsky”, years before the USSR fell.
- Creating the myth of Alexander Popov
- Abducting Dickie Bow in Berlin, so that he could see ‘Popov’ - which also allowed him to be manipulated into following one of Popov’s thugs many years later
- Linking the Popov myth to the very real Cicadas
- Resettling the Cicadas in Upshott
- Make It Look Like an Accident: Min Harper. Supposedly hit by a car while cycling drunk in the rain, because he saw something he shouldn’t have seen.
- No Range Like Point-Blank Range: Subverted. Min Harper is trailing Pashkin’s guards when they spot him and he suddenly feels cold steel against his neck. It’s Kyril’s cigarette lighter.
- Obstructive Bureaucrat: Roger Barrowby, who’s auditing MI5. If it wasn’t for the audit, Spider wouldn’t have needed to cut corners and involve Slough House.
- Only Known by Their Nickname: Richard Bough is better known as Dickie Bow. Catherine Standish notes that his parents should have known better.
- O.O.C. Is Serious Business: Jackson Lamb is initially polite and professional when asking questions at Oxford and Reading stations.
- Papa Wolf: Jackson Lamb may be a dreadful person and horrible to his staff, but if you hurt anyone he worked with in the old days - or any of the ‘slow horses’ - he’ll take it very seriously indeed.
- Plot-Triggering Death: Dickie Bow, as he’s murdered in the first few pages. And it’s the investigation of his supposedly accidental death that drives one half of the plot.
- Renegade Russian: Katinsky. Still reviving old schemes long after the fall of the USSR
- Scatterbrained Senior: Played with. River’s grandfather, the O.B., is deliberately vague when mentioning ZT/53235 (“or something like that”), but actually remembers it very clearly.
- Spotting the Thread:
- Roddy Ho disentangles the online coverage and fake news stories to demonstrate that Pashkin doesn’t really exist.
- Roddy also goes back far enough in the Upshott records to identify the ‘Cicadas’ - sleeper agents settled there by the USSR decades ago.
- Bad Sam does a full background check on Rebecca Mitchell, the woman who supposedly killed Min Harper in a car accident and uncovers the connections in her past. Sam also spots that someone else had started following the same line of enquiry… but then stopped.
- Stalker with a Crush: Shirley Dander was harassed by one, a man working for MI5’s comms team. She was reassigned to Slough House after identifying him and beating him up.
- Sudden Sequel Death Syndrome: Min Harper
- The Mole:
- ‘Lady Di’ Taverner hints that one of Slough House’s new recruits is actually reporting back to her. Not true, and Lamb doesn’t fall for it. But others do, so it still sows a little discord in the team.
- The USSR wipes out ZT/53235 because it’s easier than finding the mole embedded in the research team. But there is no mole, just rumours carefully choreographed by MI5.
- The Scapegoat: As usual, ‘Lady Di’ Taverner distributes blame in the way that benefits her.
- Roger Barrowby, who was technically in charge when the London incident takes place, is left with no option but to accept the blame and resign.
- Slough House’s work is, as usual, thankless. They are blamed for compromising a sting operation led by ‘Spider’ Webb, which isn’t quite what happened. Webb himself is treated as a fallen hero, not an incompetent who caused the whole mess.
- The Starscream: ‘Spider’ Webb is mostly concerned with his own advancement and entirely happy to undercut his own boss, Di Taverner, if it improves his prospects.
- The Stoic: Louisa Guy plays the role very well when speaking to Spider Webb after Min Harper’s death. It’s discussed as an accident and it’s only the narration that reveals she hasn’t fallen for the cover-up, knows damn well it was murder and is going to kill the people responsible.
- Suicide Attack: Subverted. Katinsky and Pashkin’s plan tries to convince MI5 that Kelly Tropper’s about to fly a small plane loaded with fertiliser-based explosives into a London skyscraper. The explosives were never onboard and she’s actually just going to drop leaflets.
- Played straight with Katinsky’s final act, blowing himself up along with Upshott’s church.
- Two Aliases, One Character: Nikolai Katinsky and Tommy Moult.
- Underestimating Badassery: Shirley Dander’s stalker worked for MI5 and was pretty sure his creepy phone calls were untraceable. Shirley also worked for MI5’s comms team. She traced them.
- Unseen No More: Bad Sam, mentioned several times in Slow Horses, finally makes an appearance.
- Where's the Kaboom?: Katinsky remotely detonates the bombs the Cicadas have planted around Upshott. And absolutely nothing happens, as they’ve Become The Mask and betrayed him. It then slides into Alas, Poor Villain territory…
