The blurb:
Catherine Standish knows that chance encounters never happen to spooks.She's worked in the Intelligence Service long enough to understand treachery, double-dealing and stabbing in the back.What she doesn't know is why anyone would target her: a recovering drunk pushing paper with the other lost causes in Jackson Lamb's kingdom of exiles at Slough House. Whoever it is holding her hostage, it can't be personal. It must be about Slough House. Most likely, it is about Jackson Lamb.And say what you like about Lamb, he'll never leave a joe in the lurch.He might even be someone you could trust with your life...
We're back with the slow horses, the walking mistakes of the British intelligence service!
This is a cracker of a read; past the prologue, the story starts for real with the kidnapping of Catherine Standish, a move intended to force one of the other slow horses to infiltrate the service's Regent Park facility and bring out the infamous Peter Judd's background file.
For some novelists, that would be enough plot to be going on with. For Mick Herron, it's the first act.
The plot of this one is satisfyingly twisty and turny, but that's only part of the fun. The real delight of this one is, as in the others, the characterisation. Jackson Lamb continues to be a burping, farting monster but one who will respond with fangs and claws if you touch one of his joes. He's pitiless, and I think this is the first time we really see him truly in action at street level—we've seen the political machinations, but using a bit of loose change to get entry to the kidnapper's house was brilliant and brutal. He feels free to torment the slow horses, but god help anyone else who even tries.
Speaking of political machinations, we've seen Diana Taverner and Peter Judd up close; this time around we also see Ingrid Tearney, Taverner's boss, and get inside her skull a bit. That trio—Judd, Taverner and Tearney—exist solely to advance themselves, their agendas and their personal standing. When Jackson Lamb is one of your novel's most moral characters (in his own unique way, anyway), you know that the others are flawed indeed, and the depths of the unholy trio's plots and their reactions to what happens around them is illuminating, let's say.
The humour continues to be a high point: mordant and biting, never in the way of the story but lighting it up.
The next one is on reserve at the library and I should be able to pick it up soon. I’m looking forward to it.
Started: 6 July 2025
Finished: 11 July 2025
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