The blurb:
From the Intelligence Service purgatory that is Slough House, where disgraced spies are sent to see out the dregs of their careers, Jackson Lamb is on his way to Oxford, where a former spook has turned up dead on a bus. Dickie Bow was a talented streetwalker once, good at following people and bringing home their secrets. He was in Berlin with Lamb, back in the day. But he's not an obvious target for assassination in the here and now.
On Dickie's phone Lamb finds the last message he ever left, which hints that an old-time Moscow-style op is being run in the Intelligence Service's back-yard. Once a spook, always a spook, and even being dead doesn't mean you can't uncover secrets.
Dickie Bow might have tailed his last target, but Lamb and his crew of no-hopers are about to go live.
I enjoyed this one. As in Slow Horses, the characters are lively — not always likeable (again, Roddy Ho, looking at you), but always memorable. There are some changes in cast with Shirley and Marcus arriving at Slough House, and they're drawn as clearly as the characters from Slow Horses.
The plot in this one is considerably twistier; if you come to it from the TV show, you'll notice significant changes, and you can see why, especially around the removal of Tommy Moult. But it's still clear and pacy enough to keep moving well throughout the book. The humour is similar to Slow Horses — present, but a long way from taking over.
Fast read, enjoyable, with engaging characters and a catchy plot that you have to pay attention to.
Started: 10 May 2025
Finished: 14 May 2025
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