London Rules

The fifth of Mick Herron's Slough House novels begins with gunmen arriving in a sun-baked village and proceeding to slaughter a number of the inhabitants. It's a shocking, brilliantly written opener with the location of the village remaining unconfirmed until the very last sentence. It's a really jarring moment.

Herron is on top form here, the humour blacker than ever, the satire sharp and the cast of characters fully realised, from the puffed-up, Farage-like MP Denis Gimball to the weak and flawed Secret Service chief Claude Whelan. But the real focus is, as usual, the perennial screw-ups of Slough House. Techno-geek fantasist Roderick Ho gets embroiled in a honey trap, narrowly avoids two attempts on his life and still thinks he's the hero. Meanwhile terrorist atrocities are ramping up pressure on the Service - are they connected, and are they running an old Service playbook? If so who gave it to them?
And what's next?

The other Slow Horses attempt to unravel the mystery, despite supposedly being locked down by Emma Flyte (head of the Service's “Dogs”, the internal enforcers), who ends up cuffed to a chair while Jackson Lamb sends his minions off to try and stop a possible assassination. This does not go well. The Lamb of London Rules is, if anything, even more decrepit than in previous books - drinking heavily, smoking like a chimney (and coughing like a lung is about to come up), with personal hygiene that leaves a lot (if not everything) to be desired.

But, as ever, Lamb seems to know how to be in the right place at the right time, what strings to pull, and who to blackmail to get what he wants. Which is mostly to be left alone with his empire of losers.

Herron keeps the pace moving and the final couple of chapters are really quite tense with various Slow Horses again trying to prevent an act of terrorism. And even if things seem to work out Lamb's way there's always a fly in the ointment. In this case Service Second Desk “Lady” Di Taverner, who would rather Lamb and his minions were a distant memory. She sows a little seed of poison at the end and it will be interesting to see how it germinates in the next novel, Joe Country.

There's a sense of Herron putting all his ducks in a row as we perhaps near the end of the series. The novel after Joe Country is simply called Slough House, which is a nice symmetry to the first, Slow Horses. So maybe we won't be be in the company of Jackson Lamb for much longer? Enjoy him while you can.