Publishers Weekly
★ 04/09/2018
British author Herron’s superlative fifth Slough House novel (after 2017’s Spook Street) opens with a terrorist attack in Derbyshire that kills 12. All MI5 resources are looking for the culprits—with the notable exception of the “slow horses,” the spies demoted to London’s Slough House, who suffer from self-doubt and the crushing weight of the abuse of their leader, Jackson Lamb, “a fat bastard you dismissed at your peril.” They are actually pretty competent, and one of them, J.K. Coe, has a powerful insight into the Derbyshire terrorists after a second attack. Meanwhile, someone’s trying to kill hacker Roddy Ho, and Ho’s colleagues want to know who and why. Eventually, the investigation into Ho’s attempted murder converges with the search for the terrorists. The ironic title, an echo of the “Moscow rules” trope of cold war fiction, conjures up the absurdities and intrigues of bureaucracy, espionage, and politics. Herron combines a strong plot with a fine, often comic style as he celebrates the power of community in response to terrorsim. Agent: Juliet Burton, Juliet Burton Literary Agency (U.K.) (June)
From the Publisher
Praise for London Rules
A Times (UK) 100 Best Crime Titles Since 1945
Shortlisted for the CWA Gold Dagger
Shortlisted for the CWA Ian Fleming Steel Dagger
An Evening Standard Best Crime Novel of the Year
A Daily Mail Best Book of the Year
An Irish Times Best Book of the Year
Shortlisted for the Theakston's Old Peculier Crime Novel of the Year
“Mick Herron is the John le Carré of our generation.”
—Val McDermid
“Herron cleverly spins the templates of the spy thriller, and his style can bite with the wit of an Evelyn Waugh or Kingsley Amis.”
—Tom Nolan, The Wall Street Journal
"[Herron] really is funny and his cynicism is belied, here and there, by flashes of the mingled tenderness and anger that seem to define Britain’s post-Brexit self-reflections."
—Charles Finch, USA Today
"Scathingly funny."
—Newsweek
"Slough House, in this winning series, is where incompetent or disgraced British spies spend their days on meaningless busywork. That is, unless they stumble into genuine espionage. Herron is a subtle stylist, and he strikes a perfect balance of big-hearted humor and thrilling spy stuff."
—The Seattle Times
“Hilarious and suspenseful . . . Sharper than most espionage fiction being written today and manages to stay uncannily contemporary.”
—St. Louis Post-Dispatch
“The new spy master . . . If Slough House on Aldersgate Street EC1 really existed it would already rival the Old Curiosity Shop on Portsmouth Street WC2 as a landmark of literary London . . . Herron has read his Carl Hiaasen as well as his Charles Dickens. The coruscating cynicism and cartoon comedy do not detract from the seriousness of the message: ‘Hate crime pollutes the soul, but only the souls of those who commit it.’”
—Evening Standard
“The new king of the spy thriller.”
—Mail on Sunday
“The best modern British spy series.”
—Daily Express
“Herron's comic brilliance should not overshadow the fact that his books are frequently thrilling, often thought-provoking, and sometimes moving and even inspiring. Reading one of Herron's worst books would be the highlight of my month and London Rules is one of his best.”
—Sunday Express
“His character [Jackson Lamb] is a modern Falstaff . . . He's [Herron] been called the heir to Len Deighton—and Mick Herron's latest mordantly funny espionage novel only backs that up.”
—Sunday Times
“London Rules confirms Mick Herron as the greatest comic writer of spy fiction in the English language, and possibly all crime fiction.”
—The Times
“Superb.”
—Irish Times
“Sharper, funnier and more distorted than ever.”
—Literary Review
“This is modern British spy fiction at its brilliant best; taut, tense, quirky, funny and thrilling.”
—Choice
“Le Carré looks sugar-coated next to the acid Slough House novels . . . As a master of wit, satire, insight and that very English trick of disguising heartfelt writing as detached irony before launching a surprise assault on the reader's emotions, Herron is difficult to overpraise.”
—Daily Telegraph
“Herron adeptly negotiates the rules of satire and the laws of libel to create fictional public figures who simultaneously hit more than one real-life bullseye . . . Stylistically, Herron's narrative voice swoops from the high to the low but it's the dialogue that zings: the screenwriters of the inevitable TV version won't have to change much . . . Herron is a very funny writer, but also a serious plotter.”
—The Guardian
"A terrorist attack in Derbyshire kills 12, leading to a difficult manhunt with twists and turns in a strong plot combining espionage, bureaucracy and the power of a community’s response to a terrorist attack."
—The Gainesville Sun
"Herron’s sharp wit makes the Slough House novels something special, his team of maverick spies bringing a delightful, freewheeling edge to the genre. This is prime spy fiction with more than a touch of wry."
—Booklist, Starred Review
“The most remarkable and mesmerizing series of novels, set mostly and explicitly in London, to have appeared in years. It is hypnotically fascinating, absolutely contemporary, cynical and hopeful.”
—The Arts Desk
“Jackson Lamb—subtle of brain but outrageously gross in almost every other way—still rules over his band of misfit agents in this fifth title in Herron's hilarious take on the contemporary spy thriller. Based at decrepit Slough House, dumping ground for the security services' awkward squad, his team get the jump on their disdainful colleagues when a weird terrorist plot starts to play out.”
—Sunday Times Crime Club
"Herron shows once again that the United Kingdom's intelligence community is every bit as dysfunctional and alarmingly funny as Bill James' cops and robbers."
—Kirkus Reviews
"Superlative . . . Heady stuff for a powerful thriller cleverly disguised as entertainment."
—Open Letters Monthly
"London Rules is often so funny that you ought to avoid reading it on public transport, where solitary giggling is looked at with some disquiet."
—Reviewing the Evidence
"This blackly humorous fifth in the series is a deserved finalist for the 2018 Gold and Steel Dagger Awards."
—Stop, You're Killing Me!
“London Rules may be the best Jackson Lamb thriller yet, and that's saying something, considering how brilliant the previous ones are.”
—Mark Billingham, author of the internationally bestselling Tom Thorne novels
“London Rules takes the Jackson Lamb series to new levels of nerve-shredding tension, leavened as always with moments of eye-watering hilarity—often on the same page.”
—Christopher Brookmyre, author of the Jack Parlabane thrillers
Praise for CWA Gold & Steel Dagger Winner Mick Herron
"Terrific spy novel . . . Sublime dialogue, frictionless plotting."
—Ian Rankin, bestselling author of the Inspector Rebus series
“[Herron's] cleverly plotted page-turners are driven by dialogue that bristles with one-liners. Much of the humor comes from Herron’s sharp eye for the way bureaucracies, whether corporate or clandestine, function and malfunction. The world of Slough House is closer to “The Office” than to 007.”
—The Associated Press
“The sharpest spy fiction since John le Carré.”
—NPR's Fresh Air
“Compulsively readable, tightly plotted.”
—Los Angeles Times
"Mick Herron never tells a suspense story in the expected way . . . In Herron's book, there is no hiding under the desk."
─The New York Times Book Review
"Stylish and engaging."
─The Washington Post
“Heroic struggles, less-heroic failures and a shoot-out-cum-heist . . . with no let-up in the page-turning throughout.”
—Esquire
“A funny, stylish, satirical, gripping story . . . Memorably seedy characters, sharp dialogue, complex plot. I’m hooked.”
—The Guardian
“This is blackly funny, tense and worryingly plausible. The most enjoyable British spy novel in years.”
—Mail on Sunday
“[A] deliciously sleazy and sophisticated spy thriller.”
—The Irish Times
"Herron combines the thoughtful characterizations of John le Carré, the humor of Len Deighton’s Harry Palmer books and the puzzlebox plots of Brian Freemantle into an altogether new and satisfying spy concoction."
—Spywrite (website)
Kirkus Reviews
2018-04-03
A sixth round of troubles for the slow horses of Slough House, where burned-out, compromised, or incompetent members of Her Majesty's intelligence community have been banished (Spook Street, 2017, etc.), pits them against a group of terrorists who seem to be working from MI5's own playbook.It doesn't usually make headlines when a crew of uniformed men efficiently murder a dozen inhabitants of an isolated village, but when the target is Abbotsfield, in the shadow of the Derbyshire hills, attention must be paid. The time-servers at Slough House, the last group anyone in the know would expect to get anywhere near this outrage, are roped into it when Shirley Dander celebrates her 62nd drug-free day by saving her colleague Roderick Ho from getting run down by a car. Flatulent Jackson Lamb, the head of the troops at Slough House, doesn't believe Shirley's story of attempted vehicular homicide, but even he changes his tune after a second attempt on Ho's life kills an intruder whose corpse promptly disappears and police match the bullets found at the scene to one of the weapons used in the Abbotsfield massacre. When someone tosses a bomb into the penguin shelter in Dobsey Park and a second bomb is disabled before it can blow up a Paddington-bound train, alarm bells go off for J.K. Coe, the newest arrival to Slough House, who realizes (1) these outrages are all being perpetrated by the same team, (2) they're following a blueprint originally conceived by the intelligence community, and (3) they still have several escalating chapters left to go. Just in case this all sounds uncomfortably menacing, a subplot concerning the threats posed to the nation's security by a cross-dressing Brexit partisan is uncomfortably comical.Herron shows once again that the United Kingdom's intelligence community is every bit as dysfunctional and alarmingly funny as Bill James' cops and robbers.
