The first in the private eye Zoe Boehm series, although until near the end she appears as a minor character in this book.
Completely different from the Slough House novels, this is equally brilliant. The main difference is a single central character, Sara Tucker, a mildly unhappily married woman who encounters a shocking event during a nicely depicted and horrendous dinner party she has been forced to give – ( a nearby house explodes) and she decides to follow up various anomalies.
She is plunged into a shocking government conspiracy to lose people, two of whom were officially already dead, in an attempt to cover up chemical warfare experimentation.
He does write very well about both the bureaucratic spooks (as in Slough House), their operatives (a couple of pretty scary brothers) and the inter reactions.
A long book, with interesting minor characters, Gerard, the husband’s client, in particular. The ending is brilliantly put together.
This guy writes an awful lot better than the much heralded Charles Cumming.
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