London Rules (Slough House)

I enjoyed this book immensely and recommend you read it as soon as possible.A hallmark of London Rules and the other Slough House books is they seamlessly combine drama, action and humor.Humor.For grins, I annotated each passage in the book that made me smile or laugh out loud — and ended up with a total of 105. And about 25% of those were sustained belly laughs. The humor comes in the form of the narrator’s satirical observations and the character’s invective banter and vulgar puns, frequently delivered unexpectedly in dramatic situations. Lamb has the most punchlines but all the main characters at times deliver slashing comebacks and biting sarcasm.Action.This book has plenty of action. Mass shootings, fights, gun fights — it all drives the plot forward and adds suspense. Genuine suspense, not the “action thriller” suspense in bad movies that translates to insipid, implausible and insufferable. The reader cares about the characters and never knows who’s going to die. It keeps the action interesting.Drama.Most of the characters in London Rules are tormented. They struggle with addictions, PTSD, the memories of murdered or lost loved ones, their dead-end careers, their frustrated political aspirations, their sexual peccadillos. Their struggles tinge all interactions with tension. And when the characters hurt, we empathize with their pains because we know them well.The narration is top notch, full of pop culture references and detailed descriptions of scenes. The diction is precise. Be sure to look up words you don’t know. For example, if you don’t know the meaning of “vajazzle,” look it up when you see it in London Rules. You’ll get a laugh for your effort. The narrator personifies different parts of the day (for example, dawn) and depicts it creeping through and observing Slough House. Definitely literary. Definitely difficult to do in an entertaining way. Mick Herron pulls it off with aplomb. I’ll leave you with a sample:“On (dawn) goes, down the final set of stairs, and somehow passes through the back door without recourse to the shove this usually requires, the door being famously resistant to casual use.”

Not the best of the series, but as always, an enjoyable story. I found the humor to be cranked up a little more, the sense of danger slightly less. Some revelations on past events and a bit of a cliff hanger moment at the end has me looking forward to the next book in the series.

This fifth installment in the Slow Horse/Slough House spy novel series provides the same thrills and sarcastic humor I’ve come to expect from Mick Herron. The story starts with a terrorist attack on villagers in Derbyshire. A jeep bearing all black-clad men with machine guns comes careening through a small village. The men open fire, gunning down innocent people going about their daily business, men, women, and children. Outrage resonates throughout England, sending shock waves through the intelligence community.Claude Whelen, the current head of Regent’s Park (MI5), is in trouble. Not only did his agents fail to anticipate the attack, but he is also caught in a compromising situation when a current Member of Parliament antagonistic to Regent’s Park is killed, and he is the last known person to see the man alive. Whelen’s precarious position is not improved by Diana Taverner, second in command at Regent’s Park, angling to usurp him.The slow horses come into the picture when it becomes known that Rodney Ho, the resident technogeek and aspiring Lothario, leaks intelligence information to a girl pretending to be his girlfriend. In charge of the slow horses, Jackson Lamb must put his team on the front line to stop the terrorists, salvage Rodney, and stay one step ahead of the A-team spymasters at Regent’s Park. Of course, as the agents track the terrorists, nothing is what it seems.Herron displays his usual in-depth knowledge of spycraft and politics, cheekily written scenes of the misfit spooks, and masterful descriptions of slow horse headquarters in Dickensian style. I alternate between savoring each well-crafted line, laughing out loud, and racing through the pages in suspense. Like the other books in the series, this one may be read as a standalone, but it is so much more enjoyable when you know the characters’ backstories that have been built carefully from the first one. If you like your mysteries and spy novels well-written, darkly humorous, and thrilling, you’ll love this one.

Great writing. Part thriller, part dark comedy, part spy book. Herron is an excellent writer who provides vivid details and great analogies to make the story.

Fantastic! Easy and quick read. Entertaining as usual with compelling characters and dialogue. Jackson Lamb is the man! A sad bunch of folks but terribly fun to read.

Some of the dialogue and Lamb behavior is getting a bit overwrought, as are the literary devices (dawn doing X, night doing Y). That said, still a compelling page turner with characters I like and fun plot twists along the way. Well worth the read.

Si me gusta

Great book.

I loved the tv series so I started to read these books…this is good….well written, funny, fast and keep you on your toes up until the end

If you enjoy satire then I think you will really enjoy London Rules. The humour, coupled with some page-turning action scenes and the wonderful cast of dysfunctional, troubled and deeply flawed characters make this spy thriller a terrific read.The humour in this series of spy thrillers just gets darker and darker, with this book the darkest to date. By the end of the novel I found myself wondering if it is only the 'failed' agents of Slough House who offer any hope for Britain's future given how completely untrustworthy and unscrupulous the political elite and others appear to be. The machinations of the super ambitious Diana Taverner, Second Desk (Ops) at Regents Park, where the 'real' MI5 spies are headquartered, are a joy to behold; unless, of course, you are on the receiving end of them! For most of the characters it seems the most important London Rule is 'CYA'.However, while I enjoyed most of the humour, I found some of Jackson Lamb's comments and observations a bit too gross for my liking. Lamb is the head of Slough House, where washed up MI5 operatives are sent in the hope that the tedium of life there will result in their resignations. While he is deeply loyal and protective of his staff, his approach to people management is certainly somewhat unconventional.The story opens with a terrorist attack and a seemingly unrelated attempt on Roderick Ho's life. Ho is the IT geek in the Slow Horses unit. As the plot unfolds we are drawn deeper and deeper into the lives of the various characters, and this for me provides the key enjoyment of this story. We discover a lot about each of the members of Slough House and why they have ended up being 'parked' there. I should say that I found some aspects of the plot to be a little too incredulous, but I decided early on that I would not let this spoil my overall enjoyment of the story.Besides the terrific opening to the story, the ending is equally dramatic. While it ends on a cliffhanger, you somehow just want to know what is going to happen next. All I can say is thank goodness the next book in the series has already been published!

The Slough House universe has something borrowed from a Latin American magic reality myth, perhaps Macondo. The characters are so good they have reached this status.In ‘London Rules’ once again, Jackson Lamb and his freaks deploy their doubtful skills to solve something, always with exquisite attention that the status of the Circus is not to be disturbed.Politics, social satir and slices from the slow horses’ troubled lifes are blended into a good narrative that only loses its pace around the final third of the novel, where the writer seems to have lost momentum and does not know how to bring in the dénouement. Well done and looking for the next one!