Spook Street

Starred review from December 19, 2016
In Herron’s terrific, and terrifically funny, fourth Slough House novel (after 2016’s Real Tigers), London’s intelligence teams are on full alert after a suicide bomber kills dozens in a mall. But at Slough House, the home of British spies put out to pasture, the immediate need is to investigate the possible murder of one of its own, River Cartwright, apparently shot while seeing to his grandfather David Cartwright, a former powerful member of the Service, now a paranoid old man. Those in charge quickly figure out the people responsible for the bombing but don’t understand the motive. Meanwhile, the Slough House team, led by the despicable Jackson Lamb, tries to figure out who would go after River. The search leads to France and a recently torched commune, an odd ménage of Americans, Russians, and children. The two plot lines slowly converge amid a heady mixture of deadpan humor, deft characterizations, and acute insight (“A loose bullet rips a hole in normality”). The title refers to a suspicious state of mind: “When you lived on Spook Street you wrapped up tight: watched every word, guarded every secret.” Agent: Juliet Burton, Juliet Burton Literary Agency (U.K.)

January 1, 2017

"Slow horses" (failed spies) are back in the spotlight with a whirlwind descent into the perils of dementia when a deteriorating old spook starts leaking some of his work stories to local tradesmen. Alarmed, his grandson, River Cartwright, consults an office mate. Both of them are members of the despised Slough House unit where agents with "issues" are condemned to slow death by boredom. But not today! The old spook is a linchpin in an American agent's project to create an elite force of provocateurs. An overzealous member of this force freelances a terrorist incident. To keep things quiet, the granddad has to be eliminated. VERDICT In this fourth breathtaking installment (after Real Tigers) of this lively espionage series, Herron is never wrong-footed. Funny, biting, and devastating in his insights into the culture of espionage and antiterrorism, this supremely confident author devises characters and plots that in other hands would surely turn to mush.--Barbara Conaty, Falls Church, VA

Copyright 2017 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

Starred review from January 1, 2017
A flash mob gathers in a West London shopping center. The mall suddenly fills with young people; a large boom box appears, and they all begin dancing with abandon. Then a suicide bomber kills the dancers. Meanwhile, at Slough House, where out-of-favor British spies are stabled (picking up from Slow Horses, 2010), River Cartwright is worried about his grandfather, David, who seems to be slipping into dementia. Once a legend among Britain's spooks, David has taken to walking to the store in his pajamas, and he's certain he's being watched. While visiting his grandfather, River discovers a dead man who bears a striking resemblance to River himself, and after depositing David with a friend, he is off to France to determine the identity of the dead man. Herron always has plenty on his mind, and this time his plot is predictably full, with subjects as diverse as dementia, the espionage bureaucracy, the political wars within that bureaucracy, and the nature of contemporary terrorism. His ruminations on these topics are elegantly expressed, and, as always, he delivers sharp-edged dialogue that is quite often savagely funny. All espionage aficionados areor soon will bereading Herron. But it's high time, too, that readers of literary fiction embrace him in the way they have John le Carre.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2017, American Library Association.)

Starred review from April 15, 2017
Ella Nygaard's father was convicted of murdering her mother when Ella was seven years old, leaving her in a series of disastrous foster homes. Now a single mother rendered virtually unemployable by panic attacks that often land her in the psychiatric ward, Ella faces losing her son to the same system. Realizing that she has to confront her childhood nightmare, Ella kidnaps Alex from his foster home and takes him to the Danish coastal town where her mother was killed. She abandons years of determined refusal and agrees to live in her grandmother's empty home, painfully aware that her grandmother hopes to mine her memories for evidence of her father's innocence. Her grandmother will be disappointed; Ella has no memories of that night. But, as she slowly opens herself to Barbara, the town's alcoholic resident artist, and Thomas, her closest childhood friend, Ella finds that her mind is slowly releasing glimpses of her family's last night that don't fit the evidence given at her father's trial. Ella's parents' voices are threaded throughout, moving slowly toward the murder and introducing foreboding elements such as her mother's involvement in a darkly zealous religious group, hints of mental illness, and her father's infidelity. The skillfully calibrated atmospheric tension and Ella's realistically awkward struggle toward redemption will appeal to fans of literary suspense like that of Jennifer McMahon and Karin Fossum.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2017, American Library Association.)