Slow Horses (Slough House #1) by Mick Herron (2010) was the book club pick for May. If you’re not familiar with the book or the Apple TV series, it follows a group of MI5 agents assigned to Slough House in London for what remains of their failed careers. They are nominally still part of the agency but don’t get to do much. They are led by Jackson Lamb, who is an odious, annoying man. The primary character is River Cartwright, a frustrated, young legacy spy who failed a simulated assessment and was relegated to Slough House despite his grandfather’s legendary contributions to the agency.
While I was engrossed in the mystery — who has kidnapped the budding middle eastern comic and why? — I had some problems with the book. First, the author has chosen to describe Jackson Lamb as fat, as a means of enhancing how unpleasant of a person he is. There is just no reason for it. I won’t go into the details, but it happened over and over and essentially ruined the story for me. Also, there were a lot of characters to keep track of, without many distinguishing characteristics between them. I kept having to go back to figure out who was who.
I did finish it, and there were a couple of scenes that I enjoyed, but the anti-fat bias that was baked into the character of Jackson Lamb could not be ignored. Authors need to do better and not automatically assume that readers want to associate fat characters with negative personality characteristics.
Reading While Fat 