Nobody Walks: Mick Herron

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If you've read the novella The Catch, you'll recognize Herron reusing a device, that of a “retired" agent being put into play by a devious member of Regents Park.

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. This is vintage Mick Herron displaying his incredible ear for dialogue - especially of East End villains - and descriptive passages gilded with lyricism.His work has won the CWA Gold Dagger for Best Crime Novel, the Steel Dagger for Best Thriller, and the Ellery Queen Readers Award, and been nominated for the Macavity, Barry, Shamus, and Theakstons Novel of the Year Awards. JK Coes first appears in The List, and then in this, before finally appearing as one of the slow horses in Real Tigers. He might have thought he'd left it all behind when he first skipped town, but nobody really just walks away. This is a grim, grim story, without any of the humour that lightens the main Slough House series, or the of-the-moment political commentary that makes those books so relevant. The police track down his estranged father, Tom Bettany, who's been living abroad for a few years working various manual labour jobs.

Herron's trademark witty dialogue and sensorily descriptive writing once again pulls me in and keeps me engaged. However, not all the facts stack up for Tom and he begins his own investigation into Liam’s friends, colleagues and his boss Vincent Driscoll at the software development company where he worked. He and Liam hadn’t spoken in a long time, and when they did speak, it was mostly so Liam could accuse him of neglecting, and therefore killing Liam’s mother, who died of cancer. What bothers Bettany is that he can't find any lighters or matches in Liam's apartment so he believes that someone must have been there with him, someone who lit the joint. The official account is that he was high on a new, particularly strong blend of marijuana and fell from his own living room window.His arrival in the city ignites the interests of many, from mob bosses to the upper echelons of MI5. 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.

In 2022 I re-read Nobody Walks (2015) as part of a re-read of all of Mick Herron's Slough House books. Martin Boyd, leaves Britain and scuffles around the rougher parts of France where nobody much wants to know anyone’s personal history.Once upon a time, Bettany had gone undercover to put the McGarry Brothers in jail for their contribution to The Troubles. Of course, there were some truly unexpected surprises courtesy of Herron's imagination, but overall this was a revenge mission with some special challenges.