The creator of Slow Horses was a Slow Horse himself…

…for a while there, at least.

From the Wall Street Journal (paywall): Mick Herron was dumped by his publisher. Then he became the world’s best spy novelist—slowly.

I have been a fan of the Slow Horses series from the moment the first book went on sale in the US. A lot of people talk about the author, Mick Herron, as the successor to John Le Carré, but I think he’s more Len Deighton’s man. Like Deighton, Herron’s characters are funnier than Le Carré’s, and his depiction of the incompetence and backstabbing and fake-it-til-you-make-it and generally down-at-heel state of things in UK government service are more ironically rendered than in Le Carré’s novels. Not that I don’t love Le Carré too, I hasten to add. He just takes himself a bit more seriously than Deighton or Herron.

I’d heard some of Mick Herron’s story before, but the journal article fills in a lot of the gaps, and is a great read. And very inspiring. Herron was dumped by his publisher, after he wrote Slow Horses (which is, in my opinion the best book of the series). He had to shop the hell out of it to sell it to another publisher. In the US, of all places. Where it disappeared without trace, until a librarian was heard raving about it on NPR (specifically on Morning Edition), after which demand shot off the charts. Who says NPR doesn’t have influence?

The most important thing for me, though, was that he kept the faith with himself. He wasn’t selling. No-one was paying attention. But he loved those characters, and he kept on writing about them. He was not attached to any kind of outcome, other than the joy of creating and the satisfaction of completion. A true artist.

Now, I should really email Steve Inskeep…