Nobody Walks: Mick Herron

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The official story is that he fell off the balcony of his flat while smoking a particularly strong batch of weed. Ingrid Tearney, the director of M15, knows that Bettany is in town and she has an agenda of her own. With Driscoll having recently been vetted for national honours, Dame Ingrid Tearney wants to deal with the situation very discreetly, so she enlists JK Coe, a still wet-behind-the-ears officer from Psych Eval, to act as go-between. Bettany might have thought he'd left it all behind when he first skipped town, but nobody ever really walks away.

JK Coe – Coe learns the hard way that “Kill the messenger” is not just a turn of phrase when you work for MI5. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added. The only complaint would be very wet clothing and socks and shoes but the book was so well written I really did not allow the physical discomfort to ruin things. While this novel doesn't have the biting humor of the Slough House books, it is a propulsive unputdownable read. I am constantly impressed by Herron’s ability to create this fictional world and make it realistic and dangerous.

When he receives a message from MI5 that Driscoll is off limits his suspicions are immediately raised, but he also wonders if he is being manipulated.

For fans of the Slough House series I would consider it essential for its introduction of Dame Ingrid and JK Coe.

But the thing is, Tom used to be a spy, working undercover for MI5 for many years, then a short stint with the Dogs, before leaving to try to live a normal life with his wife and son. It reminded me a lot of The Spy Who Came In from the Cold, with its complex motivations and use of an agent perhaps past his best-before date. I admit to a bit of paranoia and some willingness to use social lies to get events to work out to my liking, but I am a rank amateur compared to these folk. Set in the world of Herron's Slough House series, and not including Slough House in the tale, Nobody Walks gives me a look into Dame Ingrid Tearney (1st desk at MI5) and the spider webs she spins. Once again, Herron produces a fast-paced crime novel with twists and red herrings to keep the reader guessing and the pages turning right up to the jaw-dropping revelations of the final chapters.

My history with Mick Herron's books, and the fact that this one was published in 2015 during the Slough House series that I so love, led me to expect great things from this book. I was expecting a completely standalone story, but was pleasantly surprised to find it set in the Slough House-iverse.Such things – the treatment of suspects, the over-rigorous pursuit of testimony – did not take place on English soil, as she had stated more than once to more than one committee. The underground, arteries hardening, was a wheezing queue of trains in the which passengers, squeezed into awkward shapes, counted down the stations of the cross. Mick Herron introduces Tom Bettany, a man with a violent past and only one thing to live for: Avenging his son's death.