Real Tigers

Catherine Standish is taken from Slough House and held in a farmhouse outside London, and the price of her return is put to River Cartwright: walk into Regent’s Park and steal a file. What looks like a grievance dressed up as a kidnapping turns out to be a tiger team’s operation run inside the Service, with the Grey Books and a dead whistleblower at the centre of it, and Diana Taverner staking her career on the outcome. Slough House’s answer is improvised, expensive and, for once, effective.

Real Tigers (2016), 17 chapters, 96,961 words.

Prologue — 1,092 words
“Like most forms of corruption, it began with men in suits.”
Chapter 1 — 9,501 words
“On a night hot as hell in the borough of Finsbury a door opens and a woman steps into a yard. Not the front street—this is Slough House, and the front …”
Chapter 2 — 5,237 words
“It must have been a nursery at one time, nestling quietly under the eaves, because beneath the plain white of the ceiling Catherine could make out …”
Chapter 3 — 5,682 words
“Catherine kept a spare set of doorkeys in a matchbox taped to the underside of her desk, where Louisa had stumbled upon them quite early in her Slough …”
Chapter 4 — 5,772 words
“Thirty-nine minutes . . .”
Chapter 5 — 5,896 words
“Time was, walking up Slough House’s stairs made every day midwinter for Louisa. Now, she carried her own weather with her. Stepping through the yard, …”
Chapter 6 — 7,835 words
“There were many thorns in Ingrid Tearney’s garden—the constant need for vigilance; the ever-present threat of terrorism; Diana Taverner—and here was …”
Chapter 7 — 5,900 words
“You could feasibly throw a tennis ball and cover the distance between Slough House and St. Giles Cripplegate, but if you wanted your ball back, it …”
Chapter 8 — 4,106 words
“The Thames looked low. Years gone by, there were stories of the river freezing; of ice fairs thrown in the shadows of the bridges, and skaters weaving …”
Chapter 9 — 9,080 words
“Caviar had been on the menu at Anna Livia Plurabelle’s, and while Judd had refrained from indulging, now, as he brushed a vacant bench with a …”
Chapter 10 — 7,466 words
“It was the violet hour once more, and still the heat had not lifted. As River eased out of the car he felt his stomach muscles complaining, and before …”
Chapter 11 — 6,543 words
“River didn’t drop more than a foot or so, landing on the cement floor with enough of a bump to remind every last bone of the debt he owed Nick Duffy. …”
Chapter 12 — 5,814 words
“Catherine Standish admired the empty bottle.”
Chapter 13 — 4,646 words
“The pub was off Great Portland Street, and she remembered being here once before, a wake for a dead agent, Dieter Hess. The usual pious utterances, …”
Chapter 14 — 4,972 words
“A tidy battlefield is a good battlefield, thought Nick Duffy. He wasn’t positive that particular gem appeared in those art of war texts City dickheads …”
Chapter 15 — 4,174 words
“The motorway was quiet in the way motorways sometimes are, its traffic-buzz little more than static, with only the occasional comet of oncoming …”
Chapter 16 — 3,245 words
“It was the hour after lunchtime, and the heat had changed its tune; a subtle variation that brought the promise of release, if only because it seemed …”
Open questions
Question What does Real Tigers deliberately leave unresolved, and which gaps are accidents? Evidence C09, River: “He didn’t pick Standish at …
POV map
Question Who sees what, and what does the distribution of viewpoints do to the reader’s knowledge? Evidence Ch Words Sections POVs C00 1,092 …
Structure
Question How is the book built, and what does its shape do that a linear thriller would not? Evidence 17 chapters, 96,961 words, 134 …
Timeline
Question What is the book’s chronology, and where does the text actually pin a date? Evidence When Event Chapter The previous winter, before …