Starred review from April 9, 2018
British author Herron’s superlative fifth Slough House novel (after 2017’s Spook Street) opens with a terrorist attack in Derbyshire that kills 12. All MI5 resources are looking for the culprits—with the notable exception of the “slow horses,” the spies demoted to London’s Slough House, who suffer from self-doubt and the crushing weight of the abuse of their leader, Jackson Lamb, “a fat bastard you dismissed at your peril.” They are actually pretty competent, and one of them, J.K. Coe, has a powerful insight into the Derbyshire terrorists after a second attack. Meanwhile, someone’s trying to kill hacker Roddy Ho, and Ho’s colleagues want to know who and why. Eventually, the investigation into Ho’s attempted murder converges with the search for the terrorists. The ironic title, an echo of the “Moscow rules” trope of cold war fiction, conjures up the absurdities and intrigues of bureaucracy, espionage, and politics. Herron combines a strong plot with a fine, often comic style as he celebrates the power of community in response to terrorsim. Agent: Juliet Burton, Juliet Burton Literary Agency (U.K.)
April 15, 2018
A sixth round of troubles for the slow horses of Slough House, where burned-out, compromised, or incompetent members of Her Majesty's intelligence community have been banished (Spook Street, 2017, etc.), pits them against a group of terrorists who seem to be working from MI5's own playbook.It doesn't usually make headlines when a crew of uniformed men efficiently murder a dozen inhabitants of an isolated village, but when the target is Abbotsfield, in the shadow of the Derbyshire hills, attention must be paid. The time-servers at Slough House, the last group anyone in the know would expect to get anywhere near this outrage, are roped into it when Shirley Dander celebrates her 62nd drug-free day by saving her colleague Roderick Ho from getting run down by a car. Flatulent Jackson Lamb, the head of the troops at Slough House, doesn't believe Shirley's story of attempted vehicular homicide, but even he changes his tune after a second attempt on Ho's life kills an intruder whose corpse promptly disappears and police match the bullets found at the scene to one of the weapons used in the Abbotsfield massacre. When someone tosses a bomb into the penguin shelter in Dobsey Park and a second bomb is disabled before it can blow up a Paddington-bound train, alarm bells go off for J.K. Coe, the newest arrival to Slough House, who realizes (1) these outrages are all being perpetrated by the same team, (2) they're following a blueprint originally conceived by the intelligence community, and (3) they still have several escalating chapters left to go. Just in case this all sounds uncomfortably menacing, a subplot concerning the threats posed to the nation's security by a cross-dressing Brexit partisan is uncomfortably comical.Herron shows once again that the United Kingdom's intelligence community is every bit as dysfunctional and alarmingly funny as Bill James' cops and robbers.
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May 1, 2018
The grisly traces of the previous incident at Slough House (the satellite office for demoted and outcast British spies) have been painted over, but Jackson Lamb and his deplorables still work in shadows so deep that in a fresh red alert, the team is locked down on site. A raging crescendo dominates MI5 as the elite top desks deal with Brexit politics, evasions of a Muslim mayoral candidate, terrorist attacks, and the internal fight-to-the-career-death battle to be First Desk. Rude and crude Lamb slyly mentors his team of joes to keep them from getting erased from the payroll. Lauded as a brilliant satirist needling British spydom in a verso version of John le Carré, Herron writes with literary panache that belies the rough aggression of current international relations. VERDICT Fans of the CWA Gold Dagger Award-winning series will dive into the scrum of Herron's fifth outing (after Spook House) and thus deeply enjoy the mordant humor woven into the insanely complicated plot.--Barbara Conaty, Falls Church, VA
Copyright 2018 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.
Starred review from May 1, 2018
Britain reels when 14 residents of the tiny village of Abbotsfield are killed. But it's the discredited spies of Slough House, cast out of MI5 in Regent's Park, who suss out what's behind the killings. Abbotsfield is just the first of what seem random attacks: a bomb explodes in a penguin enclosure in a park, another bomb is found on a train. When ballistics link Abbotsfield to recent attempts on the life of Slough House techie Roderick Ho, his colleagues take action, ignoring a directive to stay in lockdown. Meanwhile, over at MI5, the bureaucrats must appease the prime minister and keep an eye on two populist politicians. All of which the outrageous, malaprop-dropping Jackson Lamb, who heads Slough House and knows the London Rules governing official espionage protocol, understands all too well. Herron's sharp wit makes the Slough House novels something special, his team of maverick spies bringing a delightful, freewheeling edge to the genre. This is prime spy fiction with more than a touch of wry.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2018, American Library Association.)
Starred review from May 1, 2018
The grisly traces of the previous incident at Slough House (the satellite office for demoted and outcast British spies) have been painted over, but Jackson Lamb and his deplorables still work in shadows so deep that in a fresh red alert, the team is locked down on site. A raging crescendo dominates MI5 as the elite top desks deal with Brexit politics, evasions of a Muslim mayoral candidate, terrorist attacks, and the internal fight-to-the-career-death battle to be First Desk. Rude and crude Lamb slyly mentors his team of joes to keep them from getting erased from the payroll. Lauded as a brilliant satirist needling British spydom in a verso version of John le Carr�, Herron writes with literary panache that belies the rough aggression of current international relations. VERDICT Fans of the CWA Gold Dagger Award-winning series will dive into the scrum of Herron's fifth outing (after Spook House) and thus deeply enjoy the mordant humor woven into the insanely complicated plot.--Barbara Conaty, Falls Church, VA
Copyright 2018 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.