A tantalisingly satisfying short story that reminds one that the next episode of life in Slough House is overdue. A sharp, witty reminder that Mick Herron is today’s master of the spy novel. More please....and soon!

The Drop is a very brief “novella” (an extended short story, really) which is in parallel to the Slough House series and continues the story of Hannah Weiss which began in The List. I suspect that this story may become an important feature of future Jackson Lamb books, but for now it’s a sidelight on goings on elsewhere in the Service and an introduction to a new character for Slough House.

Be aware that Jackson Lamb does not appear at all in The List, so his brilliant, hilarious cynicism is absent here and this is a much more straight-down-the-line spy story. It’s good, if not fantastic. I have to say that charging as much as many full-length books for a story of well under 100 pages does seem wrong to me, but I enjoyed reading it very much and can recommend it.

A little amuse bouche to keep our appetite wetted until the next Slow Horses book. This is another short story following on from The List - I hesitate to call it a "novella," as it is marketed by the publishers!

It features all of Mr Herron's gifts and quirks as an author and is a nice, short bite sized taste which soothes and satisfies the plate as we wait agog for the main course.

Solomon Dortmund knows his business; he’s been doing this for so many decades that nothing can surprise him anymore. But observing a classic drop in a café is something that rarely ever happens these days. He is sure about what he has seen and reports it back to Regent’s Park. There, this is not a total surprise since the woman involved is a double agent whom the Germans believe to be their mole with the British. But Hannah Weiss has her own agenda and she knows whom she is working for. When service analyst Lech Wicinski is doing a favour for an old acquaintance, he sets in motion a chain of events that will make himself one of the tragic victims.

Mick Herron’s The Slough House series has won several awards and was shortlisted for many more, among them the Ian Fleming Steel Dagger Award, the British Book Award and the Gold Dagger. “The Drop” – a rather short novella only slightly liked to the series – is the latest instalment of it. Yet, it is much more a classic spy novel than the rest of the series since it has in my humble view a much more traditional setting with double and triple agents and members of the service operating in the field.

There is not much to say about the plot, it is quite straight forwards without any side lines or too much detail about the characters. As a reader, you dispose of information from both sides, i.e. the English as well as the Germans, and thus can observe both services operating. It is common in those kinds of operations that innocent bystanders become necessary victims and thus, also in “The Drop” we see people fall without having made the slightest mistake. The novella mainly serves as a backstory for the latest member of the Slough House team and I liked the quick read a lot for its atmosphere of old-times spy novels.

So Mick Herron sets out to provide us dedicated fans of the 'slow horses' a short story that serves to keep us going until the next full length installment of Slough House, and which I suspect will provide us with juicy future storylines from the repercussions of what happens here. Old spies never forget their trade, as Solomon Dortmand proves when he visits his regular Marylebone cafe. Dortmund observes a 'drop', a now old fashioned practice amongst spies, taking place between a young woman and a man that is to set off a chain of unexpected events. Dortmund is not suffering from dementia, he knows what he has seen, as he reports to John Batchelor, a part time babysitter for retired spies. Batchelor's only success in his now severely curtailed career was the recruitment of Hannah Weiss, aka Snow White. He is now skittering on the edges of homelessness in a London struggling to cope with snow. Having misgivings about reporting this officially, he calls in a favour from a man he met at a funeral, Alec/ Lech Wicinski. Wickinski is to learn the hard way that no good deed goes unpunished. Always a pleasure to step into the world of Slough House, even if it is an all too brief visit. Many thanks to John Murray Press for an ARC.

The Drop by Mick Herron is a nice novella that fills the gap until the next full "Slow Horses" book and introduces a new member of the team.

Looking forward to the new full novel next year

A short filler from Herron which doesn't feature his wonderful 'Slow Horses' but which does offer the backstory to a new member of the Slough House team. The story here is slight but informed, and lit by Herron's usual sly humour. Something to keep us going till the next Jackson Lamb novel...