Clown town

Herron's preternatural talents for satire and spycraft are on full display in his latest Slow Horses novel (after Bad Actors). The crimes of a murderous informant who worked with British intelligence in Northern Ireland during the Troubles move a trio of former spies to seek recompense by blackmailing Diana Taverner, First Desk at the Regent's Park headquarters of MI5. Rather than swatting the trio aside, Diana seizes the opportunity to shift blame for their findings onto some of her many rivals. Meanwhile, River Cartwright, grandson of late Service veteran David Cartwright, hears from the man curating his grandfather's library that a book has gone missing. Still recovering from a near-fatal poisoning, River learns that the phantom volume is a repository of state secrets. As those potlines converge, Jackson Lamb, head of Slough House's ragtag group of MI5 rejects, gets roped into Diana's scheme. With his trademark balance of complex plotting and bone-dry laughs, Herron steers the narrative toward a jaw-dropping ending that leaves at least one key player dead and promises big changes for the future of the series. Overflowing with gritty action and mordant humor, this is as good as espionage novels get. Agent: Lizzy Kremer, David Higham Assoc. (Sept.)

A series of mounting complications leads to yet another fight to the death between the discarded intelligence agents of Slough House and the morally bankrupt head of MI5. As Jackson Lamb's motley crew on Aldersgate Street struggles to cope with the deaths of River Cartwright's grandfather and mentor, intelligence veteran David Cartwright, and their dim, beloved colleague Min Harper, new troubles are brewing. Diana Taverner, who runs the British Intelligence Service from Regent's Park, is being blackmailed by former MP Peter Judd to do his bidding. Nothing untoward about that, of course, but this time, Judd's demands, backed by a compromising tape recording, are more pressing than usual. So Diana reconvenes the Brains Trust--Al Hawke, Avril Potts, Daisy Wessex, and their ex-boss Charles Cornell Stamoran--whose last assignment was to serve as the contact for psychopathic IRA informant Dougie Malone while turning a blind eye to his multiple rapes and murders, which were really none of the Crown's business. Taverner's new assignment for the Brains Trust is the assassination of Judd. Since all these developments are filtered through the riotously cynical lens of Herron's imagination, nothing goes as planned, and when the smoke clears, the fatalities don't include Judd. Now that Judd knows he has as much reason to fear Taverner as she does to fear him, Lamb offers to broker a peace meeting between them which Slough House computer geek Roddy Ho will keep secret by knocking out 37 security cameras around Taverner's dwelling. What could possibly go wrong? The best news of all: The climax leaves the door open to further reports from the hilariously misnamed British Intelligence. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.