Why a Booktrail?
2000s: Never outlive your ability to survive a fight.
2000s: Never outlive your ability to survive a fight.
Twenty years retired, David Cartwright can still spot when the stoats are on his trail.
Jackson Lamb worked with Cartwright back in the day. He knows better than most that this is no vulnerable old man. ‘Nasty old spook with blood on his hands’ would be a more accurate description.
‘The old bastard’ has raised his grandson with a head full of guts and glory. But far from joining the myths and legends of Spook Street, River Cartwright is consigned to Lamb’s team of pen-pushing no-hopers at Slough House.
So it’s Lamb they call to identify the body when Cartwright’s panic button raises the alarm at Service HQ.
And Lamb who will do whatever he thinks necessary, to protect an agent in peril . . .
Where those not quite up to Mi5 standards work:
“Slough House was a branch of the Service, certainly, but ‘arm’ was pitching it strong. As was ‘finger’, come to that; fingers could be on the button or on the pulse. Fingernails, now: those you clipped, discarded, and never wanted to see again. So Slough House was a fingernail of the Service: a fair step from Regent’s Park geographically, and on another planet in most other ways. Slough House was where you ended up when all the bright avenues were closed to you. It was where they sent you when they wanted you to go away, but didn’t want to sack you in case you got litigious about it”
There’s a bomb in a shopping centre at the start of the book which is sadly something we’ve seen in the news recently. Then there’s the issue of what happens to a spy who has retired and is now suffering from dementia. Some hard hitting issues here.
Destination: London Author/Guide:Mick Herron Departure Time: 2000s
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