The blurb:
The Drop: Old spooks carry the memory of tradecraft in their bones, and when Solomon Dortmund sees an envelope being passed from one pair of hands to another in a Marylebone cafe, he knows he's witnessed more than an innocent encounter. But in relaying his suspicions to John Bachelor, who babysits retired spies like Solly, he sets in train events which will alter lives. Bachelor himself, a hair's breadth away from sleeping in his car, is clawing his way back to stability; Hannah Weiss, the double agent whose recruitment was his only success, is starting to enjoy the secrets and lies her role demands; and Lech Wicinski, an Intelligence Service analyst, finds that a simple favour for an old acquaintance might derail his career. Meanwhile, Lady Di Taverner is trying to keep the Service on an even keel, and if that means throwing the odd crew member overboard, well: collateral damage is her speciality.
A drop, in spook parlance, is the passing on of secret information.
It's also what happens just before you hit the ground.
The List: Dieter Hess, an aged spy, is dead, and John Bachelor, his MI5 handler, is in deep, deep trouble. Death has revealed that the deceased had been keeping a secret second bank account - and there's only ever one reason a spy has a secret second bank account. The question of whether he was a double agent must be resolved, and its answer may undo an entire career's worth of spy secrets.
Despite the fact that the book is titled The Drop & The List, The List was published in 2015 The Drop is from 2018.
This is quite short: but it's a neat introduction to both JK Coe (The List) and Lech Wicinski (The Drop), and Hannah Weiss and 'Peter Kahlmann', who form much of the plot of Joe Country. The main person in both, though, is John Bachelor, who would honestly probably be better off at Slough House than on his 'milk run' of looking after retired assets who defected from 'the other side' during the Cold War. At least he'd have friends, which is something he seems to need desperately.
When we're introduced to him in The List, he's barely holding what's left of his career together; the milk run is a part-time job, he's barely competent enough to manage that (Lamb calls him 'third rate at best'—although from Lamb, that's actually not bad), and he's on the edge of being completely broke. He just wants a comfortable, cushy, undemanding job until he retires, is that too much to ask? Well, yes, if your job is in intelligence... When one of his clients, Dieter Hess, dies, a secret bank account is uncovered—bad news for Bachelor because why would Hess need a secret bank account?
It's a twisty little story of double and triple agents, and if you've read ahead in the main novels, one name in particular will be familiar. But this is a nice little bit of filling in around the edges.
The Drop is even more so; it's not so much useful for John Bachelor, except to illustrate just how fast he's sliding downhill, but it's a very useful introduction for Joe Country, both in terms of plot and character—to the point that it feels like it was more a section cut from Joe Country and published this way. While it would have added a bit to the length, I think it still could have fitted there.
Started: 1 January 2026
Finished: 3 January 2026
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