Suffice to say that I went out and bought the all the available published books that is how much I loved these books in the "Slough House" series.

A breath of fresh air in the noirish espionage genre - for there are certainly elements of noir in Jackson Lamb, our anti-hero and Cold War leftover.

A meandering story the leaves you wondering where you will end up - and not always at the conclusion you think you are heading towards.

I would love to see this as a TV series!

4★
“Eight months of anger f**king management sessions, and this evening she’d officially be declared anger free. It had been hinted she might even get a badge. That could be a problem – if anyone stuck a badge on her, they’d be carrying their teeth home in a hankie. . .”

More of Herron’s trademark humour, off-beat characters, and action in and around London. Plus his wonderful mood setting where the weather and the time of day become their own characters. I love this part of his style.

This fifth book in the series isn’t dependent on the first four, but readers who haven’t met Jackson Lamb or the others before are less likely to enjoy the interaction between characters. Lamb is unique. Often drunk, living in a cloud of cigarette smoke, and more of a bear than a lamb.

“The smoke from his cigarette was a blue-grey spiral, but broke into rags when it hit the ceiling. Still daylight outside, barely evening yet, but Lamb punched his own clock, and won on a technical knockout.”

Roddy Ho, who self-identifies as “The Rodster”, is the pivot-point for this instalment. He is an IT whiz who thinks he’s a lady-killing Mr Cool because he has a "girlfriend", Kim, whom we met in Spook Street. We know she’s been using him for wiping credit card debt and such while holding out the promise of a loving relationship eventually– just not “yet”. This time, we meet her people.

The book opens with an attack in a village that sounds like it’s in the middle of a war zone. Herron moves us between the attackers, the Slough House crew, the real spy headquarters at Regent’s Park, and politicians.

I found this slow going for a while and lost interest in some of the characters, but as the plot thickened (sorry, I’m not as inventive as Herron), I enjoyed it like the others in the series. I particularly enjoyed seeing more of J.K. Coe, the deadly newcomer to Slough House.

“And as for J. K. Coe, Catherine recognised a hand grenade when she saw one. And she didn’t think his pin was fitted too tight.”

In Spook Street, Coe’s was the final act in a

“. . . series of events so painfully compromising to the intelligence services as a whole that – as Lamb had observed – it had put the ‘us’ in ‘clusterf**k’, leaving Regent’s Park with little choice but to lay a huge carpet over everything and sweep Slough House under it.”

Poor old Regent’s Park isn’t going to be any happier about this series of events either, especially as the finger of suspicion begins pointing in their direction. But Lamb warns against alerting them yet.

“‘Yeah, but before committing Hare Krishna, let’s see if we’ve got wiggle room when it comes to assigning blame.’

‘Hara-kiri.’

‘You’re welcome.’

Lamb is such an unseemly character (grubby slob, often drunk, bitingly insulting), that the higher-ups wish they could get rid of him. But they can’t,

“Because I have so much dirt on you, I’ve started an allotment.’

The question is asked.
“‘Is he like this all the time?’

‘I expect so,’ said Catherine. ‘I don’t work weekends.’”

I can answer that. YES. Yes, he is. But he’s smart and clever and surprisingly nimble when the need arises. An unlikely saviour, if ever there was one.

This latest book speaks of Brexit and Trump, and we have politicians in the line of fire, but the focus of the plot is finding the person or group who perpetrated the attack on the village. When another event occurs, the usual hermit-like J.K. Coe breaks his silence with a suggested connection which means there’s a mole.

By the end, I was ready for the next book, and judging by a sudden brief phone call to River Cartwright (the main character in previous books), there must be one in the works. I hope so.

Thanks to NetGalley and Hachette – John Murray for the preview copy from which I’ve quoted.

P.S. For anyone who knows London, you might enjoy this lengthy excerpt. I did.

“Noon comes with bells on, because this is London, and London is a city of bells. From its heart to its ragged edges, they bisect the day in a jangle of sound: peals and tinkles and deep bass knells. They ring from steeples and clock towers, from churches and town halls, in an overlapping celebration of the everyday fact that time passes. In the heat, it might almost be possible to see their sound travel, carried on the haze that shimmers in the middle distance. And in time with the bells, other devices strike up: clocks on corners and hanging over jewellers’ premises strike the hour in their staggered fashion, all a little behind or a little ahead of the sun, but always – always – there’s one single moment when all chime together. Or that’s what it would be nice to pretend; that twice a day, around midnight and noon, the city speaks as one. But even if it were true, it would be over in a moment, and the normal cacophony re-establish itself; voices arguing, chiding, consoling and cracking jokes; begging for ice cream, for lovers to return; offering change and seeking endorsement; stumbling over each other in a constant chorus of joy and complaint, bliss and treachery; of big griefs, small sorrows, and unexpected delight. Every day is like this one: both familiar and unique. Today, like tomorrow, is always different, and always the same.”

Brilliant. Just brilliant. I sincerely hope that Mick Herron is going to continue with this series because it gets better with each book. He kills his characters off and then replaces them with better ones! Who does that in a series?

Mind you he keeps his best characters going, River, Lamb, Catherine, Louisa are in every book. And they are so entertaining. The dialogue is witty and full of black humour. When political correctness was handed out Lamb was obviously behind a door somewhere and missed the message.

Five books down and this has become one of my favourite spy series ever. It needs to be a television show! Please keep writing them Mr. Herron!

This is the fifth and most recent of the awesome Slough House series, about grumpy, revolting, flatulent but brilliant Jackson Lamb, and his dysfunctional team of permanently out of favour MI5 spies, the Slow Horses. Don’t even think about starting this if you haven’t read the rest of the series - you would miss out on so much character background, and all the politics of the place.
I got them all from NetGalley at the same time, and have raced through them in a month, which helped enormously in remembering who’s who.

This picks up a few months after the events of the last book, Spook Street, with the Slow Horses wallowing in their personal miseries as usual, although Shirley has given up the coke and Rodney has taken up Pokémon Go, when he’s not being fleeced by his hot girlfriend. When a car tries to run him down Shirley saves his life, but he doesn’t even notice, and she has difficulty persuading the team that it was not an accident. Meanwhile, a politician who hopes to ride the wave of Brexit to the PM’s office is attacking the service, and ISIS have claimed responsibility for a massacre in a remote village, but all is not as it seems, and the horses are once again dragged into plots that they do not understand, where the risk from their own side could be greater than from the terrorists.

This is another fabulous read, with the trademark witty one-liners, creative insults and deftly crafted plot. I didn’t love it quite as much as the last couple, it was a bit slow in the middle, and the ending petered out a bit, so 4.5 rounded down to 4 stars from me, but I will still be anxiously awaiting the next book, and looking up his other books in the meantime, as time permits.
Many thanks to Hachette Australia and NetGalley for the ARC.

Slough House is the place to be it seems. Jackson Lamb is in charge of a strange team of spooks that just do everything wrong it seems. He is a strange one, he smokes like a chimney and always gets everyone worked up. Some of the team think that one of their own is in danger so they decide to watch over and see what he is up to. Little do they realize that they will get someone killed by accident and get away with it. But who are the terrorists after and can they stop them or will it just continue to be a mission filled with misadventure and far too many laughs. Will Lamb be able to keep his team together even when it seems like they are about to be shut down? I found it really funny so much when wrong with them not even trying. A good read filled with some strange folk and a team that works in their own way. I was lucky enough to receive a copy via Netgalley & the publishing house in exchange for my honest review.

London Rules is Mick Herrons latest book on the Slow Horses of Slough House in MI%. The slow horses are spooks who've screwed up but are safer inside the Intelligence tent pissing out. They are put to pasture in Slough House under the dubious supervision of Jackson Lamb, a grotesque former intelligence officer whose sole saving grace is that he looks after his staff, though not to the extent of refraining from farting in their company.
The series started with Slow Horses and has got steadily better through Dead Lions, Real Tigers and Spook Street. The current book is Herron writing at the top of his form (though he occasionally cannot resist presenting a very good spoof of Charles Dickens at his most atmospheric). The plot is clever, the characters p;ausible, the pace is gangbusters and the homour is slightly undergraduate but well done.
London Rules is highly recommended and a very satisfying read.