Herron strips his revenge story to the bone, paring away unnecessary characters, episodes, speeches and gestures to produce a violent little elegy that grows both more clever and more sour as it hurtles along.” Bettany and Liam had been estranged when Liam died and Bettany always thought he'd have time to make things work again with his son. He realizes now that time's up. Liam is dead and there are no second chances. The only person who seems to have known Liam is a woman named Flea who worked with him in a gaming business called 'The Lunchbox'. Liam was hired because he was the first person to ever break the game's code.

Mick Herron - Wikipedia Mick Herron - Wikipedia

almost 4 ☆ That was how the young saw things. If that, then this. If this, then the next thing. Life, to the inexperienced, happened in straight lines. This is good business, . . . The Circle, they’re Google. They’re Apple. You don’t want to go head to head with them. You want to stand shoulder to shoulder.’” Bettany, aka Martin Boyd, as a spook, put notorious London gangsters in prison. They are out to get him. The secret service is using him and will discard him if they can. No one is on his side. He doesn’t trust and isn’t trusted. But the McGarry clan wasn't the only party interested in Bettany's return to the UK. The Head of MI5, Dame Ingrid Tearney, and another recurring MI5 staffer also popped up. Tearney has been mentioned in the Slough House novels but usually from the perspective of her envious subordinate Diana Taverner. This was the first glimpse into her head and it was in keeping with somebody as the leader of a spook agency.Slow Horses was published by Constable in 2010, but the firm declined the opportunity to publish the next book in the series in the United Kingdom due to disappointing sales of its predecessor. Soho published the Slough House novels in the United States, and John Murray started republishing the series in the UK from 2015. [7] Winning awards as well, he also gained the CWA Gold Dagger for his first effort, allowing him to garner critical acclaim as well as commercial. With series such as his ever popular ‘Slough House’ franchise, he’s managed to establish a name for himself through well researched and precise genre fiction. Knowing the area well, he’s able to bring the art-form forwards, creating his own unique take in the process. Once upon a time, Bettany had gone undercover to put the McGarry Brothers in jail for their contribution to The Troubles. Although he had given his testimony behind a screen, there were many in the McGarry clan who would be quite pleased to get their hands on Bettany for betraying them. Only the death of his son was powerful enough motivation to return to the UK. Catherine Standish is Lamb’s assistant, and a recovering alcoholic. She used to assist Charles Partner, who was First Desk at Regents Park until his suicide – something it’s rumoured Lamb might have had a hand in arranging. Partner had been selling secrets to the Russians. Taking his time over his novels, he takes his craft seriously and, with more books set to be released soon, this is something that will continue on into the foreseeable future.

NOBODY WALKS | Kirkus Reviews NOBODY WALKS | Kirkus Reviews

Standing by the Wall: The Collected Slough House Novellas (2022) - Includes all novellas in the Slough House series published as of 2022. Herron (Dead Lions, 2013, etc.) strips his revenge story to the bone, paring away unnecessary characters, episodes, speeches and gestures to produce a violent little elegy that grows both more clever and more sour as it hurtles along.

Even if Slough House means nothing to you I'd still recommend Nobody Walks as a standalone thriller. It's very clever, has some good twists, and builds to a tense and satisfying conclusion. Forget about solving all these crimes; the signal triumph here is (spoiler) the heroine’s survival.

Summary and reviews of Nobody Walks by Mick Herron - BookBrowse

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. 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.Bettany is a retired secret ops agent who worked for M15, Britain's secret service. Ingrid Tearney, the director of M15, knows that Bettany is in town and she has an agenda of her own. She sics a psychiatric newby on Bettany who gives him Marten Saars' name. Additionally, the gaming company that Liam worked for is run by a very eccentric man named Vincent Driscoll. Coe delivers the message that Ingrid wants Liam to keep his hands off of him. Bettany wonders why. In the meantime, he buys a gun. By eight the first swell of workers had flooded the city and the second was gathering force. The underground, arteries hardening, was a wheezing queue of trains in the which passengers, squeezed into awkward shapes, counted down the stations of the cross.” Louisa Guy was sent to Slough House after she lost a tail involved in gun smuggling. She is one of the most competent agents and appears in every book. She and Min Harper had a brief but intense affair which ended in tragic circumstances.

Nobody Walks by Mick Herron | Hachette UK

Nobody Walksis a very different kind of thriller: more Richard Stark than John Le Carre. It’s stripped downand raw; a satisfying, immersive thriller, bold and brutal in its simplicity.” Slow Horses' Renewed Through Season 4 at Apple TV+". The Hollywood Reporter. 1 June 2022 . Retrieved 17 June 2022.

Publication Order of Standalone Novels

If you haven't read Nobody Walks and you love the Slough House books then make a point of reading it. Both Ingrid Tearney and JK Coe feature. JK Coes first appears in The List, and then in this, before finally appearing as one of the slow horses in Real Tigers. In this book, readers discover what happened to JK Coe prior to becoming a slow horse and why he is a little, ahem, jumpy. Ingrid Tearney is at her manipulative and conniving best. Long stretches of boredom interspersed with moments of panic. That too, summed up much of his own career. Herron has frequently been compared to le Carré, but I’ve often felt that that was just lazy thinking because although they’re both fine writers and take espionage as their subject, the style and approach of the Slough House novels is very different from le Carré. Here, Herron produces a thoughtful, serious and penetrating character study of Bettany which is more reminiscent of le Carré. Herron also builds a fine, tense plot peopled with well drawn characters and which refuses to give easy, neat answers. Thoughts became rituals in themselves. You plodded the same course over and over, like any dumb beast or wind-up toy. Undercover, after all, was what Bettany did when his own life failed him. Undercover meant dropping out of sight, leading somebody else's life in a succession of foreign cities. It meant leaving everything behind.