The book's title London Rules subliminally communicates this to the reader. Brussels rule is in the past but 'one of the unforeseen consequences of Brexit . . . was that it had elevated to positions of undue prominence any number of nasty little toerags.' Those that missed out on elevation might have made their way to Slough House. On second thoughts, they might even have stayed at Regent's Park.
The building where the slow horses ply their trade is no cleaner than it was in any of the previous books. This is the fifth, and the filth remains. No one can accuse Jackson Lamb of mounting a clean up operation, the dirtiest room of all being his office on the top floor, from which he likes to fart on those below, and which no amount of air freshener or fumigation could make right. Lamb doesn't jettison his persona, it sticks to him like dog poo to a shoe and smells as bad. Profane, flatulent, lover of whiskey and cigarettes, sharp as a razor, he is the alpha male stallion here, brooking neither rival nor alternative opinions.
The building where the slow horses ply their trade is no cleaner than it was in any of the previous books. This is the fifth, and the filth remains. No one can accuse Jackson Lamb of mounting a clean up operation, the dirtiest room of all being his office on the top floor, from which he likes to fart on those below, and which no amount of air freshener or fumigation could make right. Lamb doesn't jettison his persona, it sticks to him like dog poo to a shoe and smells as bad. Profane, flatulent, lover of whiskey and cigarettes, sharp as a razor, he is the alpha male stallion here, brooking neither rival nor alternative opinions.
The slow horses graze around in their Siberian stable, a mere half hour on foot from MI5 Headquarters, banished there for misdemeanours usually explained, although the cause for Lamb's exile is never detailed. Travellers to Slough House were given a one way ticket. 'From Regent's Park to Slough house: ‘a distance that could be walked in thirty minutes, though the return journey was unclockable, because nobody had ever made it.'
Over at Regent's Park, a beleaguered Claude Whelan is first desk at MI5 Headquarters, where trust amongst colleagues is in short supply. He is defending himself against assault from all sides in a world concisely summed up by Lamb: 'Ethical behaviour's like a vajazzle on a nun. Pretty to picture, but who really benefits?' Whelan wants to protect the Prime Minister from ambitious pretenders such as Denis Gimball, a Brexiteer MP who covets the No 10 spot. Gimball is an unsavoury prat but one who is outdone only by his obnoxious wife, a red top columnist who makes a point of going for Whelan. It is difficult to evict the image of Nigel Farage from the mind each time Gimball pops up, which is all too frequent. At one point he assumes the persona of Pat Rabbitte: 'actually, he reflected, he'd have been better off saying it had been an electoral promise. Only infants and idiots expected you to keep those.'
Ricky Lee Jones could have penned a song, Rod Ho's in Love, to stand in for Mick Jagger's Strange Game in.the television series. It might have captured the atmospherics better. Roddy Ho, the in-house IT geek has fallen in love but none of his colleagues can bring themselves to believe that the love is reciprocated. Afterall who could love Ho but himself. So smitten is Roddy that he is oblivious to the very real attempt to kill him. Shirley Dander intervenes to save Ho but her past drug addiction - she is now 62 days clean - persuades Lamb not to be persuaded that Ho was targeted for assassination at all. A second attempt changes his mind.
The attempts on Ho's life are part of a wider web that begins with an attack by armed men in a Derbyshire village, Abbotsfield, leaving twelve people dead. Add to that the mass slaughter or penguins at London Zoo and a bomb placed on a high speed train, it leaves the spooks with a lot of figuring out to do, but the dots are joined once forensics show a link between the second attempt on Ho's life and the Derbyshire incident.
And so the hunt begins. The horses might be slow but the ride is anything but.
The attempts on Ho's life are part of a wider web that begins with an attack by armed men in a Derbyshire village, Abbotsfield, leaving twelve people dead. Add to that the mass slaughter or penguins at London Zoo and a bomb placed on a high speed train, it leaves the spooks with a lot of figuring out to do, but the dots are joined once forensics show a link between the second attempt on Ho's life and the Derbyshire incident.
And so the hunt begins. The horses might be slow but the ride is anything but.
Mick Herron, 2018, London Rules. Publisher: Baskerville. ISBN-13: 978-1473657397
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