The Jackson Lamb books just keep getting better - while Jackson himself keeps getting worse - his health, his treatment of everyone around him and his utter contempt for his leaders in the secret service. It is probably why this series is so popular.

Jackson is the bloated spider in the centre of the web that is Slough House, where agents that cause embarrassment are sent to be forgotten, a sort of asbestos-laden gulag in Greater London.

Wiped from official files, the Slow Horses find themselves used as guinea pigs for baby agents to use to improve their tailing skills. Things get worse when former Slow Horses start dying in unsuspicious, unrelated accidents, and a ghost form the past turns up at the door of one of the less terrible Horses. Things start going downhill form there.

Herron's biting satire is top form in Slough House, slinging barbs at the government with special hate reserved for the current PM and casting dour looks at privatisation and the dangers that entails when tying it it to government departments. The plot fairly races along with enough diversions with the more hapless members of the dysfunctional team to keep casual readers happy!

The only downside is I don't know how long I will have to wait Mick Herron to write a new novel - but the series is eminently re-readable and I don't mind waiting!

Is this the swan song for Slough House? With the lowest form of agent, the estate agent, now in charge of the building, I wonder. I have lapped up every one of Mick Herron's Slow Horses novels, finding them extremely humorous and also revealing. I miss the introductions which whetted the appetite for the novel to come, where ingenious devices were used to describe the creaking pile which is Slough House. The later books in the series didn't have this. In this novel, we find tit for tat reprisals breaking out between the secret agents of London and Moscow. To be more accurate between Moscow and Jackson Lamb's horses, a sort of Wacky Races with no bets being taken on who will come out of it alive. River finds the still waters of a pond to be a life saver.....his. However, his inheritance may be his downfall. We'll have to see. Jackson Lamb continues to entertain with his wit and repartee, although sadly not for those on the receiving end. Personally, I love it. For those new to this series, I would not recommend it, better to start at the beginning.

Another enjoyable episode of the adventures of Jackson Lambs motley crew despite the authors view of our current political situation. Much remains as before in that some characters meet untimely ends with dark deeds fomented by ex politicos and media tycoons with faraway assassination and revenge centred on Slough House. The amusing patter is still here and brilliantly put across . Still a good yarn and space has been left for reprisals to come!

Worth the wait as ever and written in typical Herron style.

In this next Slow Horses book the are some problems. They have disappeared off the official list so it appears they don't exist. That is something they need to look at and while they do some of their old number (ex slow horses) start getting killed. It surely can't be coincidence can it?
Jackson Lamb and his motely crew are trying to find out what is going on? Why has the park disowned them. Are they bumping the slow horses off and just what can or will Lamb do about this one?

Herron never fails to deliver in these Slow Horses books and writes with ease that the story moves along and before you know it your half way through this instalment. I really enjoyed this one as Lamb and crew try to discover what is going on and try to mount a fight back. I don't want to give too much away but it is worth the read for the style, story and wit that is in these books. If you haven't read the Slow Horses then do and start at book one, you won't be disappointed. If like me you count the days for the next book then this doesn't disappoint so hurry up and get it, you know you want to.

Someone is killing secret service agents, past and present, from the Slough House team. Jackson Lamb can't understand it. Well, what he actually can't understand is why, having seen them, anyone would bother. But the deaths are mounting up and something needs to be done. After all when things went awry on Spook Street, they generally went the full Chris Grayling. Over at Regent's Park, Diana Taverner is quietly jubilant about an operation which saw the perpetrator of a Novichok poisoning in the UK (three people seriously injured and one dead) dispatched. It isn't just the message that was sent: she's also delighted that she managed to fund the operation off the books. Some private money was brought in. She won't always be so jubilant about this.

You know exactly what you're getting with Mick Heron's Jackson Lamb series. From a negative point of view, you're going to get something that's written in a tried and tested format: open with a description of Slough House, lay out the plot, do the exciting bit and finish off with another description of Slough House. You know that the satire will be merciless: History has an open-door policy. Any fool can walk in.

Or the description of the prime minister as a cross between a game show host and a cartoon yeti.

Occasionally, you'll wonder if something has been introduced simply so that Jackson Lamb can be politically incorrect about it. Reece Nesmith III is a gay American dwarf: I couldn't spot any plot reason for his having achondroplasia but it does give Lamb the opportunity to make some offensive comments. Perhaps the least offensive is to tell people not to worry about what they say in front of him as it'll all go over his head.

Oliver Nash is still head of the Limitations Committee: every Joe's nightmare: a career bureaucrat with an operational veto. This might be the reason why Lady Di chose to go off the books with her operation: even Oliver Nash can't stop something of which he's not aware. The source of the funds was Damien Cantor, head of a rolling news channel, who's about to think he's done more than donate money to a good cause.

The characters we know and love are all there. River Cartwright is still mourning the loss of Sidonie Baker. Roddy Ho's still a wizard with a computer but as un-self-aware as ever and Catherine Standish is still trying to keep things running without resorting to alcohol, no matter how much Lamb tries to tempt her. Lech Wicinski would prefer to be called Alec but it's a moot point as no one speaks to him. His face still looks as though it lost an argument with a cheese grater. Yes - you know exactly what you're getting.

And the surprising things is that it's still fresh, it's still funny and it's still a damned good story. The satire is biting and no one is exempt, even senior royalty. In earlier books, I thought that Peter Judd was the alter ego of Boris Johnson but we have two bites of the cherry in Slough House: Peter Judd's still there but Boris Johnson is the prime minister over at number ten. Don't worry there's plenty to have a dig at to cover both characters.

It's a very good read and even if you came to it without having read the earlier books in the series you wouldn't feel any more lost than the occupants of Slough House do on a permanent basis but don't deprive yourself of a pleasure: start at the beginning.

I'd like to thank the publishers for letting Bookbag have a review copy.

This is the seventh full novel in the brilliant Slough House / Slow Horses series of witty contemporary spy thrillers and it is another fine instalment. If you have not read them all yet, then don’t worry, because you are lucky enough to be able to savour six more fabulous adventures before this one.
If you are a fan, then this will not disappoint, with entertaining prose, acerbic commentary, razor sharp humour, pithy dialogue, erudite insight, and two sophisticated and interlinked plots.
Slough House starts off with a snapshot of an event, and an unknown character, that makes more sense a few more chapters in. Then we have the brief descriptive tour of Slough House, narrated by an invisible estate agent, and then we are briefly reacquainted with the Slow Horses, Louisa, River, Roddy, Shirley, Lech, and Catherine, before catching up with Jackson Lamb at a very curious little shop in Soho, and Diana Taverner, the wicked witch of the first desk at Regents Park.
Jackson Lamb has found out that Slough House and the Slow Horses have been removed from all formal records kept at Regents Park. We also find out about some ex Slow Horses who have had accidents and are dead and one important name from the past who is on the run. Clearly Jackson Lamb and the team have work to do to save themselves from some kind of oblivion.
Diana Taverner has been dealing with the fallout of Russian agents wreaking havoc in the UK and appears to be getting herself tangled up in a web of deceit spun by the manipulative puppet master, Peter Judd, and his latest vile crony who runs a media company and news channel.
There is treachery afoot with deadly consequences and a cliff-hanger ending, but while we may have to wait for the next instalment to clarify everything and see what happens, Jackson Lamb is as rude and non PC as ever, with some superb comments, that made me laugh out loud, and Roddy Ho is as deluded as ever, living in a dream world where he thinks he’s Jason Bourne, at one point he is on the tube, thinking how superior his observation skills are, as Louisa kicks him, not to miss his stop.
I would like to thank NetGalley and the publisher, John Murray, for providing an ARC in exchange for an honest review.

I wasn’t having the best of weeks. A family member died of Covid and, you know, 2021 was about as far removed from the joy of 2020 as A to B.

To compound my joy, I was revisiting an old novel I had begun years ago to see if there was anything there.
There wasn’t. I gave up. Then I opened ‘Slough House’.

This confirmed two things for me: I have the same talent in my entire body as Mick Herron has in a clipped toenail and I should abandon writing prose forever. Immediately.

And that good writing – the really good, exceptionally paced, the stuff described and as winningly put together as this, will offer an escape from grief and lack of talent in a way we should cling to like a life raft.
Because, by God, he’s good.

It didn’t take long for me to be laughing – not something I expected on that day, I don’t mind admitting.
‘Slough House’ begins, after the Prologue, with the traditional disembodied guided tour of our favourite, dilapidated office building. It’s been a wind, a cat and now it’s a rat – sorry, an estate agent, (even worse.)
“Authentic period detail there, and the seventies is a decade that’s coming back, isn’t it, what with the riots, the recession, the racism – ha! Our little joke. But no, really.”

When we lost the Maestro at the fag end of last year, Herron’s name came up quite a bit. I’ve had my say on Le Carré elsewhere http://pajnewman.com/2020/12/14/write-spy-right-time/ and my abiding love for the work but one of the irritations I find is the constant repetition in some circles citing Herron as the new Le Carré.
He isn’t.

He’s the current Herron and we better embrace him now because he’s to be savoured and enjoyed while he’s on the go.

Le Carré, Lord knows no stranger to anger at politicians or lacking cynicism, never wrote a sentence like “This was the spook trade, and when things went awry on Spook Street, they generally went the full Chris Grayling.”
But you just know he’d have liked to.

He’s not the new Le Carré, despite the terminology of his own making and the Connie-like Molly in the Archives. He’s the current Herron and we better embrace him now because he’s to be savoured.
I say “savoured” but I’m, well, lying.

I last read one of the Slow Horse novels, Joe Country, in May 2019 http://pajnewman.com/2019/05/07/slow-horses-still-glued-up/ and I should have done my due diligence before starting this one.

But I’m a glutton for Herron and so I had to sheepishly beg Slow Horse expert – owner of honeyed tones and producer of Slough House podcast Barbican Station https://spywrite.com/mick-herron-slough-house/slough-house-podcast/ extraordinaire, Jeff Quest- to remind me who had died and how because I’d lost track.

In my defence, prose like:
‘But she deserved to die. Even Gandhi would admit that.’
‘Did it never occur to you that for a supposed backwater of the Security Service, we suffer a lot of fatalities?’
‘I’ve always assumed that was down to public demand.’

Prose like that is so good it needs to be gulped down.
And so what does this instalment of the series bring? Sort of everything you want. Jackson Lamb is still a big man with a foul mouth and an odd imperviousness to HR complaints.
Di Tavernier is exactly as evil as you hope. Peter Judd is as duplicitous, sleazy and so toned down compared to real world politicians he’s almost preferable.

Satire? “The paths to power of current world leaders – paths including conspiracy to assault, knee-jerk racism, indeterminate fecundity and cheating at golf – were so askew from the traditional routes that only an idiot would have dared forecast future developments.” Check.

This time, it’s not just Slough House which has come to life. Even the other buildings in the area are personified and living in petrified fear. “Down here, a few timid retail premises huddled; the kind that looked like they’d not survive ten minutes in the open air.”

Mick Herron is about to go stratospheric. He’s already part of a dominating duopoly of the finest spy writers around alongside Charles Cumming. In my opinion, they soon to be joined by Simon Conway, whose novel ‘The Stranger’ was hands down the best novel I read in 2020 http://pajnewman.com/2020/08/03/author-simon-conway-set-to-triumph-with-the-stranger/ (including Cumming’s exceptionally strong ‘Box 88’) https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B082QVZYWC/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?_encoding=UTF8&btkr=1
But as soon as Gary Oldman dons the dirty mac of Lamb for Apple TVs adaptation, he’s going to reach a new audience. With that will come the petty jealousies, the hatchet the reviews, the constant nagging that he’s not as good as he was.

Well, if this novel proves anything, it is that he is. At one stage, the narrator says: ‘Make it, don’t fake it’ was Channel Go’s mission statement, unless it was its mantra, or its logo. But its general thrust was to encourage choleric rage in its viewers, so, if nothing else, Cantor had tapped into the spirit of the times.”
As had Cantor, so too has Herron. And long may he continue to do so.

The Jackson Lamb novels by Mick Herron are quite brilliant and I thoroughly enjoyed the latest addition to the series. As with previous novels it is intelligent, carefully plotted and extremely funny.
Once again we find ourselves in Slough House with Jackson Lamb who is head of a team of secret service rejects. Slough House is where agents from Regents Park are put out to pasture (or, if you prefer, shunted into a sidings) if they don’t measure up to the job. Jackson Lamb is a corpulent, alcoholic slob who hurls abuse (most of it cruel and personal, and yet most of it extremely funny) at anyone and everyone. However, Lamb is extremely clever and, when he can be bothered he is a master tactician.
We are in a world of immoral, unscrupulous and manipulative politicians and spooks that are much the same. Russia has sent a team to the U.K. to assassinate the Slough House team as they believe, incorrectly, that they are an elite squad that has carried out an assassination on Russian soil. The Russians have not only been misled but they have also been given an out of date list of staff at Slough House. So when ex Slough House employees start to die Jackson Lamb knows that something is amiss and needs sorting out.

In my opinion the spy novels by Mick Herron are among the best around. If you’ve read the previous Slough House novels then you won’t be disappointed with this one. If you haven’t discovered these novels yet then start at the beginning with Slow Horses and enjoy brilliant, intelligent spy stories that are also very funny.

Mick Herron had already established his writing talents well before he started his Slough House stories but the series has really taken off and continues to excel.
Slough House is the decaying building that houses a group of cast off British spies. The “slow horses” that the establishment would rather forget about. Their leader, Jackson Lamb is an odious man of considerable experience and cunning and is a joy of a character.
This is an incredibly current book, with “references” to many current political figures and events such as Brexit (although like Voldemort, never to be actually named). The roots in this story are set in the Salisbury poisoning but bleed into revenge, assassination and media manipulation. Why would the Slow Horses of Slough House be targeted and what happens when you mix it with Jackson Lamb, a man outraged if anyone picks on his team, because that’s HIS job.
This is as brilliant as you would hope for. A clever plot, strong characterisations and some stunning dialogue and observations.
This is a thriller and does occasionally go to dark places but the author does write with a deep wit and delivers laugh out loud moments that fit the characters perfectly while not taking anything away from the fact this is a thriller.

Before starting this book I quickly had to read the first in the series, 'Slough Horses', so I would have some idea about the main characters. Even though this is the 7th book definitely worth the effort and I will now go back and read the ones in between. Even with the obvious plot spoilers due to jumping ahead this was an excellent fun read and the plot just bounces along without a wasted sentence. Just heard they are planning a tv series with Gary Oldman. A brilliant actor but not my first thought for Jackson Lamb - hope they don't ruin it! Thanks to Netgalley.

Jackson Lamb and his slow horses return in Slough House which is the latest book in the excellent series by Mick Herron.

This is a difficult book to review without giving any spoilers other than to say that the horses have targets on their back but from whom and why is unclear.

The book is superbly written with great pacing and some nice low level humour that adds rather than detracts from a reader’s enjoyment.

This series, despite being of the highest quality, goes from strength to strength and Slough House is definitely recommended.

Well - what a surprise........Mick Herron does it again! For all the many fans of Jackson Lamb and his ‘elite team’ of no hopers, misfits and fantasists this will be a welcome return of the Slough House squad. All the usual features are present: excellent writing, especially when setting a scene or evoking atmosphere; plenty of relevant references to what is going on in the world; characters that are so well drawn and consistent that they would be old friends, if only they were fit to be seen in polite company(!); moments of credible and - when appropriate - tense action; but - most of all - the dark humour that surrounds Jackson Lamb like an odour of distinctly uncertain provenance. Some readers, including this one, will feel a little disappointed that there is unfinished business at the end of ‘Slough House’; offsetting this disappointment, however, Is the thought that another outing by Jackson Lamb’s crack squad is hopefully in the offing. Highly recommended.

Mick Herron’s Slough House is probably one of the most eagerly awaited spy novels of 2021.

The seventh book in Herron’s highly acclaimed series about Jackson Lamb and the slow horses of Slough House, it finds the team in a higher level of agitation than usual. They are still reeling from the bloodbath at the end of Joe Country, and it now seems that they have been wiped off the MI5 database. Some of them are also certain that they are being followed. When death strikes former members, it seems that the slow horses are being targeted, despite Lamb’s protestation that:
“they’ve never needed to kill us. I mean, fucking look at us. What would be the point?”

To give away any more of this exquisite plot would be a crime, other than to say that, as usual, the Service’s First Desk, Diana Taverner, is busily plotting away in the background. This time, however, it seems that she has gone too far in accepting the help of arch-manipulator Peter Judd in mounting a retaliatory attack against the Russians in response to the Novichok poisonings.

As with the previous books in the series, the plotting is superb and Herron adroitly brings together his various strands in a clever and idiosyncratic manner. There are the requisite twists and turns, and there is probably a higher level of suspense and action, than in the previous books, as Slough House steadily moves to its thudding conclusion. The dialogue sparkles and Lamb is in brilliant repulsive form, especially during his encounter with a gay dwarf, who plays an important role in the story. My favourite line, however, surprisingly belongs to Roddy Ho towards the end of the novel and cannot be revealed here.

The characterisations are nicely nuanced and very witty, especially those external to the slow horses. Lamb is perhaps becoming too much of a caricature of himself, although in couple of scenes Herron skillfully reminds us that he still has the tough street smarts of a good agent. Regular readers of the series will also enjoy the return, albeit sometimes very brief, of characters from the earlier books.

In all, a very enjoyable read that also effectively uses its pre-COVID Brexit background to make some astute reflections on the state of society, especially in Britain

Mick Herron’s Slough House series hasn’t waned rather it has deepened as it has gone along. The dark cynicism of Jackson Lamb - one of the great spy characters - is seeping into the whole narrative now.

This the seventh outing sees right-wingers marching on the street and tech empires trying to buy into the state. The buffoons at the top are happy to try and play with both for influence and power. Brexit looms. The Russians are poisoning people and we are shooting them.

In the meantime Slough House—MI5’s London dump for demoted spies—has been erased from official records, and its members are dying.

The contemporary references keep the satire level high as always, but the plotting and character building are what actually keep the series going.

It all comes together with the same aplomb as the other stories that led us here. Some of the background plots have been smouldering for a while. There are laugh out levels of dialogue and snark. If you are new to the slow horses dive in, if you’ve read earlier instalments you won’t be disappointed.

The le Carre analogies must get tedious for Herron though he plays with them here at times – gently and well.

And as Lamb says, “And remember, all of us are lying in the gutter. But some of you are circling the drain.”

As a fan of Mick Herron’s Slow Horses series, I was delighted to be given the opportunity to read the latest novel. These are modern spy novels, so incredibly up to date with political events and references that Mick must have second sight! In Jackson Lamb the team at Slough House have been blessed with the most repugnant leader it is possible to imagine, but whilst this seems to be their punishment it is actually their saving grace. Without giving away spoilers I would say this novel features familiar characters past and present (I would have found a synopsis of previous novels helpful) and doesn’t disappoint.

This was my first read of a Mick Herron book. I really enjoyed it and now feel that I need to go back to the beginning of the slow horses books. This started slowly and the action gradually ramped up. All of the characters were new to me so I had no reference points for the characters and felt at times that I wasn't seeing the full picture of each person. However, this didn't detract too much from the story as the narrative was strong enough to be above individual characters.
As in many spy novels the story deals with overseas assassins, spooks and politics. A very readable spy romp.

Another fantastic episode for the Slough House crew! The characterisation is brilliant, the language fluid and effective, and the plot faultless. Thanks to the author, the publisher and NetGalley for the opportunity to read this ARC.

Parallels

There are suggestions in the text of this latest Jackson Lamb novel that the series is reaching a conclusion. Note the similarities of this title to the first, Slow Horses. That book began with River Cartwright, this one ends with him. The first ends with the mystery of Sid Baker’s fate. That is solved here, but another parallel mystery replaces it.

The novel opens with the attractions of Slough House spun by an estate agent’s pitch. Its employees have been removed from the Service data base and no-one knows why. Some former members have met mysterious deaths. Is it too paranoid to think that there is a concerted plot against Slough House and the Slow Horses?

Add to the mix an angry Diana Taverner, out for revenge on the Russian Secret Service, her unholy alliance with the dastardly Peter Judd, who cannot possibly be the UK’s present prime minister, first because the author says so and second because he is too efficient. Hmmm…

Jackson Lamb himself is in fine form. Among other great lines you will read of Bob Marley’s Ghost. Don’t you mean Jacob Marley? No! Wasn’t it Bob who teamed with the Wailers?

This is great stuff as always, a real pleasure to read, often deliriously funny, extremely clever, with a seasoning of pathos and genuine grief.

Herron's Slough House series always sparkles, but this one was an especial joy to read. All the usual reprobates are here - River, still coming to terms with the death of his grandfather, hoping for clues of some sort from the contents of the OB's study. Roddy Ho, the most self-regarding and empathetically challenged IT whiz you ever met. Lech, with his self-scarred face. Catherine, sneaking drink home from off-licences and corner shops and then pouting it down the drain. Louisa. Shirley the Dancing Queen.

And Jackson Lamb himself, who seems to smoke so much you'd imagine it would be easier simply to pump it in from a tank.

The thing about this lot is they're supposed to be the Secret Service's 'Slow Horses' - the losers and also-rans who are still on the payroll to keep them quiet, but who can't, we are told, be trusted with anything important. As we've seen, though, in truth most are parked in Slough House because of who they've offended or what they are (especially, what they are - often, unmouldable into a conventional team, uncorporate, pig-headed or simply embarrassing) or simply because they have messed up and embarrassed the Service - not because they are incompetent or lazy. It's never stated in so many words but when they are called to action they can be formidable, and naturally they save the day.

This time though, things are a little different. Slough House, that standing joke, has apparently become so much of a laughing stock that it's been removed from the Service's records. And some of its ex-members are beginning to die off. That's the second thing that delighted me about this book - a bit more of the continuity in that we see what happened to some of those who dropped out earlier. (Spoiler: not all of it's good).

The third thing I loved was the delicate relationship that Herron's world has to ours, to recent events, especially You Know What, as he calls it - so I won't say it out loud. But You Know What. In his world, it has devastated Britain's alliances, robbed us of cash and influence and emboldened opportunistic populists. A useless, old Etonian PM has risen to power and he's being pressed hard by a "yellow vest" movement, determined to roll back progress and trying to get their hooks into the Service to advance that aim. Wholly unlike our own reality, of course, though you may feel that some of Herron's sharper darts strike home rather well, all the same.

The fourth thing (I should stop counting) I loved was the delicate tribute that seemed to be being paid at times to John Le Carré* and especially to his final novel, Agent Running in the Field. That book complimented Herron by borrowing the Slough House idea but also contained its own excoriating critique of You Know What. Here Herron repays the compliment both subtly - there are a couple of clever references to circuses; Regents Park, the Service's HQ, has 'database Queens' to match le Carré's 'register Queens' and archivist Molly, who oversees them, is a dead ringer for Le Carré's Connie - and through that central motif of exploring why we fight and whether the means adopted might render assumptions of patriotism, moral superiority and rectitude arguably moot. Certainly Diana, First Desk at Regent's Park, has got herself and her Service into some ambiguous places, even if prompted by the (real life) use by the Russian state of chemical weapons in the UK.

Jackson Lamb is of course your go-to man for walking on the dirty side of the street (not least because if he walks one side of a street, it WILL be the dirty side, even if it wasn't before). We cheer on this chain-smoking, foul mouthed, offensive candidate for a COPD ward because he has an authenticity and a morality that contrasts with all the smoother types here, even if he is just as, or even more, arrogant than them. And Jackson has collected his team of oddballs and no-hopers for a purpose, they're not just going to stand by and let things go bad or what wold have been the purpose of their, various, downfalls and exile?

If all the foregoing hasn't convinced you to read this book, I fear nothing may, but I can add more! This is a well, even deviously, plotted story, with a number of central mysteries that keeps the reader hooked right to the end. The wider roster of characters allows Herron to highlight both tenderness (River and one of the ex-colleagues) and amusing (Shirley and Lech) aspects of their relationships - a strength of course of an ongoing series, or at least it is if, as here, the characters are developed consistently and well. It is terrifically sharp, with many asides that are right on the nose. And of course it is very well written, as you'd expect.

Strongly recommended.

Mick Herron’s Slough House series is about spies in the same way that Kate Atkinson’s Jackson Brodie novels are about a private detective. Both writers provide the reader with some of the satisfactions of the genre - fast-paced plots and nail-biting tension - but are also happy to break the rules. So in Slough House you get great writing which would belong to a more ‘literary’ novel - such as the lyrical final pages in which Herron gives the readers a bird’s eye view of his characters’ minds as they live out their sad lives - but you don’t get happy endings or neat resolutions.

So it’s no good hoping that Herron’s motley bunch of losers, the ‘slow horses’, will find redemption in Slough House, the dumping ground for MI5 operatives who are sent there to do mind-numbing drudgery as punishment for major blunders. Herron doesn’t have the slightest compunction about making life much, much worse for these characters who arrived in Slough House already ‘wrapped in separate miseries’. And when two of his lonely slow horses find love, he’s got something really nasty in store for them.

What’s more, the boss at Slough House, Jackson Lamb, is the polar opposite of any fictional spy you’d care to name: ugly, with disgusting personal habits, slowly killing himself with booze and cigarettes, looking like ‘a bin someone had set fire to’. He’s a comic character who revels in offending against all the rules of political correctness. Mick Herron admitted in an interview that he thinks of the worst possible thing someone could say in any given situation and gets Jackson Lamb to say it. When one of the slow horses tells Lamb that he shouldn’t have used the word ‘snuck’, as it’s ‘not proper English’, his reply is: ‘Do I look like I give a feaked?’. And he really doesn’t. He has a great line in insults, telling his employees: ‘And remember, all of us are lying in the gutter. But some of you are circling the drain’.

However, the slothful and offensive Lamb has one redeeming feature: he metamorphoses into Jason Bourne when any member of his staff is under threat: as here, when a pair of deadly Russian assassins targets the slow horses. It’s quite something to see Lamb in action, and all the more enjoyable as no one expects a man of his size to move with the grace of ‘a tapir playing table tennis’. I can’t wait to see Gary Oldman play Lamb - he was superb as the ascetic, circumspect, dapper George Smiley, so how on earth is he going to play the gluttonous, slovenly Lamb?

Herron’s novel is set in a recognisable contemporary London, where a 5 bedroom safe house ‘costs two million quid’ and two of the slow horses, ‘both London renters, viewed it as they would a palace or a cathedral; somewhere they might get to visit, but short of revolution, meteor strike or raging zombie virus, nowhere they’d ever live’. Herron’s satirical comments on the haves and have nots in the capital are absolutely spot on.

Any fans of Boris Johnson won’t enjoy the novel, as there are two versions of him here: Boris the PM, and his alter ego, Peter Judd, a ruthless, amoral power player who runs a PR business called, appropriately, Bullingdon Fopp. Herron has mastered Boris’s speech patterns and references to popular culture and classical literature. It’s not a caricature- it could be Boris.

The plot, involving a media mogul, populist riots manipulated by Judd and revenge for the Novichok poisonings, couldn’t be more contemporary. As usual, Diana Taverner tries to outwit both Peter Judd and Lamb, but this time her power plays go spectacularly wrong.

A great read not just for fans of spy fiction, but for anyone who likes a good read or a good joke. I laughed out loud several times, even when I really shouldn’t have,at Lamb’s outrageously un-PC witticisms. But Herron also provides the reader with serious insights into the machinations of power in the worlds of intelligence and politics. He’s a writer at the top of his game.

Thank you to John Murray Press and NetGalley for my advance copy.