SNEAK, v. I have read so, so much Mick Herron in the past four months. I didn’t intend to dedicate a whole newsletter to his spy thrillers until I ran into this passage in Slough House, the seventh novel of a series that is also, somewhat confusingly, titled Slough House. Here it is, a little dialogue between Catherine Standish and Jackson Lamb:
“Sneaked, by the way,” Standish said.
“… What now?”
“It’s sneaked. Snuck’s not proper English.”
“Do I look like I give a feaked?” said Lamb.
So obviously I had to write this email.
“Sneak” is a verb that primarily means to move in a stealthy manner, like you’re afraid or ashamed to get caught. Appropriately, it is itself of hidden, uncertain origin.
Regarding sneaked and snuck, what Catherine Standish says above is true for British English, with the caveat that “proper” is a slippery notion when applied to language, or at least, more slippery than a character like Catherine Standish wants it to be. But “snuck” is standard in US English now, per Merriam-Webster, though US speakers say “sneaked” too, and some style guides require it. (Cowards. “Snuck” is great.)
“Snuck” is also of uncertain origin, and perhaps even sneakier than “sneak” itself. It is very, very unusual for a verb with a regular past tense (sneak, sneaked) to become irregular (sneak, snuck). The other direction is common enough, as anyone who has heard a toddler proudly proclaim “I RUNNED AWAY” will know.
But becoming irregular doesn’t happen much, at least not to words. And this isn’t a case of following a common paradigm, as when kids might guess that because “sing” can become “sung,” “bring” can become “brung.” (Honestly, the children are right. What are we doing with this “brought” nonsense?) The “snuck” thing is weirder still. As Merriam-Webster puts it: “No common verb follows the precise pattern of snuck: the past tense of leak is not luck, of streak is not struck, of creak is not cruck, of peek is not puck.”
Ah, but now that we have all these words in ending in -uck on the brain, how can we resist Jackson Lamb’s sneaky joke? “Do I look like I give a feaked?” It’s very much like him: funny, filthy, not fussed about the rules.
Herron loves this kind of clever wordplay, and it is only one of the qualities that has made his books irresistible to me over the past few months. The dialogue, the descriptions, the plots, that third-person omniscient point of view flying high above the city and then swooping down to situate the reader in a character’s head—all so beautifully executed.
Here, for reference, is a list of the Slough House series in order, or at least all the works I have read, with the novels numbered and other works noted:
1. Slow Horses (previously discussed)
2. Dead Lions
novella, “The List”
3. Real Tigers
4. Spook Street (previously discussed)
5. London Rules
novella, “The (Marylebone) Drop”
6. Joe Country
short story, “The Last Dead Letter”
novella, “The Catch”
7. Slough House
8. Bad Actors
short story, “Standing by the Wall”
simultaneously a sequel and a prequel novel, The Secret Hours
The books contain some elements that would otherwise put me off. The characters’ bigotry is often called out as such, but goddamn there’s a lot of it. You could write a whole essay about how fatness is presented, or, for that matter, queerness.
(It took, I think, five full novels before a major character who has been belittled or accused or teased about her possible queerness finally, in her own point of view, acknowledged an attraction to a woman. This drove me nuts. I know spies keep secrets and she would have plenty of reasons for not discussing her sexuality, but she would still think about it. And all the straight characters notice when other characters are attractive! But an underlying problem is that Herron has no notion of how attractiveness works among queer women. Shirley Dander is a short, fat butch and she could have eight girlfriends—if she wasn’t too busy going to anger management and snorting coke. The obstacle is her personality, not her looks.)
That’s not what I’m here to write, though. I just want to show you all some sentences.
Herron is dryly funny:
“Claude wasn’t a vindictive man, but this was largely because the opportunity to be one had rarely presented itself.” (London Rules)
“They were in his office. Outside, the afternoon was dying; in here, it could have been any time from 1972 onwards.” (London Rules)
“There’d been at least four corpses within these walls she knew of, and she didn’t work weekends. And this was the Service’s backwater, where they sent you when they wanted to bore you to death. God knew what went on in Regent’s Park.” (Joe Country)
But also, when an old German refugee who was an intelligence asset during the Cold War is enjoying a cup of hot chocolate in a London café:
“This is not heaven; this is not perfection. But it is a small moment of pleasure in a world more commonly disposed to pain, and is to be treasured.” (The Marylebone Drop)
It was this gorgeous, unexpected tenderness that sustained me. Sometimes these bleak, witty spy thrillers about hopeless fuckups caught up in a web of lies and betrayal far beyond their power—sometimes they’re sweet. Even two violent, terrifying characters who are about to kill each other might experience a brief human connection, and it’s funny and tragic and outlandish and bizarrely real.
The world is mostly awful. Innocent people suffer and die. Slimy assholes have all the power. Your boss is a miserable old piece of shit who dedicates his life to making you do pointless drudgery. But also, if anybody else tries to hurt you—and somebody else will try to hurt you—he will turn them inside out. And in this disgusting miasma of cruelty, every now and then, one character will be kind to another. It’s precious and fleeting, sneaking out just as fast as it sneaks in. Feaked up, if you ask me.
I will return to my regularly scheduled romance programming next time (June 23), don’t worry. And there will be vampires! Until then, I wish you well, reader friends.