Spook Street: Slough House Thriller 4

Product Information

I made the choice of reading one book out of sequence because it was convenient. Mistake! Try to read the series as written In the dilapidated offices of Slough House, these files spooks spend their time on various pointless tasks, designed to break their will and bring about their resignations, avoiding the hassle, expense and bad publicity of employment tribunals. One of the first things to appreciate is that each novel is an underdog story – a group of individuals, under-qualified and under-resourced, who have to beat their better-off cousins at The Park to save the day.

This is irresistible writing suggesting a lovechild of le Carre and Joseph Heller's Catch-22: ironclad storytelling and off-kilter humour * Financial Times, Books of the Year *What happens when a high-level spy starts showing signs of dementia? If he's unable to keep old secrets, will someone take care of him for good? First Slow Horse book, after reading quite a few chapters, i could not get Into. Hoped my favorite character would return. (Had to listen 4-5 times to audiobook last chapters of novel previous to this one. Still in disbelief.) Love Heron’s London, his wit, capability with language and how skillfully characters and plots are crafted. Still, I am broken-hearted and may not be able to finish Bad Actors. At the start of this beautifully written and ingeniously plotted standalone from Herron (Nobody Walks), 26-year-old mail room employee Maggie Barnes is trying hard not to get caught late one Continue reading » Truss stepped up to the lectern and resigned, becoming the shortest-lived Prime Minister in British history. “Supermarket salad is crowned winner,” the Guardian reported later that day. Herron stood up, sighed, and turned off the set. When Truss, at the age of forty-seven, became Prime Minister, The Economist predicted that she’d have “roughly the shelf-life of a lettuce,” and a tabloid started a contest, live-streaming a head of iceberg and asking which would last longer. “You knew where you stood with the lettuce,” Herron said.

I’m a radical feminist, as you know,” Lamb might have said, stubbing out his cigarette. “But the hot flashes always get these old girls in the end.” Herron’s strength is in examining at close hand the absurdities, conflicts, and dangers of the intelligence agency as an institution at the center of some of the most central conflicts in the 21st century.”Given that the most recent novel came out in May 2022 and the TV series has already been renewed for a second series, it's very likely there will be more. Lamb is convinced that there is a connection with a suicide bombing that has just taken place in West London. The novel is concerned with establishing precisely how the missing man, the mysterious house in France and the bombing are connected. The way in which this is accomplished shows a grasp of surveillance tradecraft that seems totally professional. One scene in particular where a spy is followed by another who, in turn, is followed by two more is very cleverly written. However, as well as being a spy novel, this is at the same time a thriller. As it progresses and the mystery becomes clearer the suspense mounts. In the light of what we are told at the beginning, much of what emerges comes from a most surprising source.

Over at Slough House, the agents are excelling at their specialty – complicating an already difficult situation.Spook Street is one of the darker novels and what little comic relief there is, is provided by Roddy Ho getting a girlfriend, a plot thread which is pulled in the follow up novel, London Rules. It also lays the ground for the events of Joe Country, and at the same time introduces a series villain, ex-CIA operative Frank Harkness. This novel is a series highlight for me, and went on to win the CWA Ian Fleming Steel Dagger Award as well as being shortlisted for the CWA Gold Dagger Award, The British Book Awards and The Theakston Old Peculier Crime Novel of the Year Award. To be a writer of genre fiction is to belong to something akin to an honorable medieval guild. Taylor’s newest book, “The Royal Secret,” is the latest in his series of best-selling thrillers set in seventeenth-century London. When Herron was saddled with being called spy fiction’s “best-kept secret,” Taylor wrote a review in which he said that Herron writes like Raymond Chandler, except better. Both Herron and Taylor blurbed Hilary’s spooky novel “Fragile.” Herron called it “a dark river.”

This ease of expression adds an extra dimension to what would in any case have been a skilful plot with extremely well-drawn characters. Spook Street is arguably even better than Real Tigers, Herron’s last Slough House novel, and cannot be too highly recommended.

Slough House, Book 8 | Bad Actors

It's all sheer fun. Herron is spy fiction's great humorist, mixing absurd situations with sparklingly funny dialogue and elegant, witty prose * The Times *