To The Last Page

“ Recent years had seen a recalibration of political lunacy “, Mick Herron observes quite early on in London Rules and, watching our political leaders on the TV News most nights, you’d begin to worry that, like political satire elsewhere, Herron’s Jackson Lamb/Slough House series might lose something of an edge in what has up to now managed to be both uproariously funny and deadly serious. In the real world, the balance hasn’t always been quite as favourable. Mick Herron then has no option but to introduce a few more lunatics into London Rules in addition to the cognitively challenged crew in the dump heap of the Secret Service in Slough House. They however all have good reasons why they’ve ended up monitoring library records across the country for anyone reading “extremist literature” or cross-checking electoral rolls against properties as an unlikely way of listing potential terrorist safe houses; incompetence, personality failings and various addictions. While not valued in the S...