This is a brilliant book; he seems to be really maturing into his Slough house characters, whose subtle and often very funny interactions improve with every book.
As does the plotting – this begins with a terrorist explosion in London, moves to /Slough House and then slowly into France where the atrocity originates.
Part 2 pulls us and the French characters slowly back into London, where everything is eventually and very bloodily resolved and ends back in Slough House, with Lamb resolving issues with his team and humiliating the new boss of MI5.
The characters who survive are also maturing in each book – the pretty odious computer wiz-kid Roderik Ho; the ex alcoholic Catherine Standish, the angry Shirley and the new and slightly obscure JK Coe, whose only real action in the book is to brutally kill Patrice, the ninja Frenchman who is one of the baddies. Not to mention River and his bonkers granddad, whose apparent murder triggered a big element of the plot.
(Takes a long time to read a book now back at work in the UK. Read this in day in Madeira; took a week back in the UK!).
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