Review: 'Smoke and Whispers' by Mick Herron

‘Smoke and Whispers’ is fourth in a series focussing on the character of Sarah Tucker (it’s called the Zoe Boehm series but Sarah is the narrator) who manages to get herself in range of fairly unbelievable investigative situations. This instalment is mediocre but, then, so were the others in the series.

It should not be beyond a decent writer’s skill to don a persona with a different gender, but Mick Herron doesn’t manage it convincingly. The protagonist, Sarah, isn’t really likeable and so the fallibility of her character merely comes across as fecklessness. In essence the character is written using too many female stereotypes for her rendering to be either plausible or admirable, neither do her many hang ups garner sympathy. She’s just a character who comes across as dithery and too much a victim to be an effective solver of crimes. It may surprise Mr Herron to know that we women don’t all obsess about our weight, cathartically shop or expect the nearest man to rid the vicinity of spiders.

The plot is pacy enough to be engaging, despite some fairly unbelievable developments, and there are some interesting secondary and tertiary storylines. This novel doesn’t have much in the way of mood changes or humour and less so because, actually, it’s just so sexist - Herron even uses the expression, ‘male-thinking’ at one point, really? It’s lazy thinking and I find those tired old cliches annoying. All of which possibly suggest that Herron was cutting his literary teeth on this book before producing the much more involving ‘Slow Horses’ series. I’m just glad I found those first!