Blogtour Review - A Lethal Legacy by Guðrún Gúðlaugsdóttir

A Lethal Legacy
Guðrún Gúðlaugsdóttir (trans Quentin Bates)
Corylus Books, 20 September 2025
Available as: PB, 234pp, e   
Source: Advance copy
ISBN(PB): 9781917586023

I'm grateful to the publisher for sending me a copy of A Lethal Legacy to consider for review, and for inviting me to join the book's blogtour.

Nothing has changed at Bjargarlækur for as long as anyone can remember – so are moves to bring change to this remote farm in the Icelandic countryside a motive for murder? Three elderly siblings have lived more or less peacefully in this isolated place their whole lives, until Brynjólfur is found dead in his own bed. Called on to help out at the farm, freelance journalist Alma is far from certain that the old man died a natural death. Determined establish the facts of the matter, she finds herself caught up in a vicious family feud. Sisters Klara and Thórdís are unable to agree on the future of the farm, just as others with an interest in the place circle hungrily around them. Echoes of missed opportunities, lost love and age-old crimes surface as a reckoning takes a bitter toll on those left behind – and Alma struggles to get to the truth.

Journalist Alma and her husband Gunnar have just embarked on renovating the wreck of a house they've bought. However a most dramatic call from daughter Gunnhildur summons Alma away to a remote farmhouse. (One of the minor delights of this novel is how - from off, as it were - Gunnar, left back at home, continually reports to Alma that he's found a new problem - the floor, the windows, the heating - that will require either a tradesman he can't find, materials they hadn't budgeted for, or indeed, a complete change of plan about layout. But he never loses his enthusiasm! It'll all be fine!). Gunnhildur, a nurse who needed some time away from things after splitting from her boyfriend, reports that the elderly man she was caring for alongside his two sisters has been found dead. She worries she may be blamed for mixing up Brynjólfur's meds, and asks her mum to come out and support Gunnhildur and her own toddler daughter Una.

This is Alma's intro to the isolated community at Bjargarlækur. Soon she's in the thick of investigating Brynjólfur's death, partly to help Gunnhildur - though dear Daughter happily scarpers part way through the story as Boyfriend has appeared again - but mostly, one senses, from a prickling of her journalist's thumbs and from sheer burning curiosity.

It's a tangled tale that emerges. The siblings were at war with one another. Brynjólfur and Klara, one of the surviving sisters, wanted to preserve the farm and turn into a museum of old Iceland. In a country that has experienced rapid change one can see why this might be worthwhile. (Another of the joys of A Lethal Legacy is the glimpses of that older Iceland that we get in the stories from the sisters and some of their neighbours. One is left in no doubt how much these remote communities were required to be self-sufficient, and the echoes of that run forward to some extent into the present of the novel, with the police remote and the authorities slow to intervene in the escalating situation).

The other sister, Thórdís, was though dead set against the museum idea. Complicating the picture is the presence of a younger couple to whom the farm has been let, and who may or may not be a pair of ne'er do wells. All sorts of accusations are thrown - Slaughtering the sheep! Selling the cows! Brewing moonshine! Behind them are suspicions they may have their eyes on the place, perhaps in a stitch-up with local authorities.

Once the possibility of murder is added to this mix of family dissension, greed and a gossipy local community - a great deal is to be gleaned from the local priest and the doctor - and Alma's shut in at the lonely, slightly spooky, house - one may well expect almost anything to happen. And there is drama. The sense though that something is rubbing under the surface is an even greater source of tension, the contrast with the bleak, static landscape and the changeless decades that the siblings have lived at Bjargarlækur only adding to this.

Is that impression of calm, of retreat, misleading though? 

At its heart a story of family secrets, A Lethal Legacy manages to be both truly Gothic, with the possibility that not everything going in totally natural, and also a fine, taut crime thriller. Alma's rather out on a limb in conducting any sort of investigation here and she lacks institutional backing to ask questions or poke around, having to rely on the sisters' goodwill (which is in short supply) and her de facto position as their nurse/ carer, to gather facts. 

As she does so it slowly becomes apparent that there is more going on here than you'd expect. With a parallel strand of the story focussing on possible past abuse affecting a member of her own family, and the differing attitudes of the sisters resulting in contradictory accounts of their earlier lives, there's a difficult jigsaw for Alma to assemble. She is, though, nothing if not determined.

I really enjoyed this story. The brooding, remote setting is a fitting location for dark deeds. Klara and Thórdís are magnificent characters, well drawn. Neither is exactly likeable - though by the end of the book one knows enough about them to forgive a lot - but they are a great double act. Alma is determined to reach the truth, at first to protect her daughter, but later, it seems, from sheer bloody-mindedness. And as I've said, the glimpses of Icelandic history and culture are fascinating.

As ever, Quentin Bates' translation sparkles, catching the very different characters of the individuals at the heart of this story through their speech - sometimes slangy and modern, at others more formal or even slightly outdated. He does this while navigating a lot of rather abstruse language describing funeral customs - wakes, lyings-in, funeral meats and such - laying clear subtle differences which matter to Klara and Thórdís. A lot of the background here would be known to the Icelandic reader and so it isn't explicitly set out, but the translation makes clear where everyone is coming from, as it were.

Great fun - and also in some aspects, very sad. I'd recommend this one strongly.

For more information about A Lethal Legacy, see the publisher's website here - and of course the other stops on the blogtour which you can see listed on the poster below. 

You can buy A Lethal Legacy from your local high street bookshop or online from Amazon.

Review - The Bewitching by Silvia Moreno-Garcia

The Bewitching

Silvia Moreno-Garcia
Arcadia, date, 
Available as: HB, 354pp, audio, e   
Source: 
ISBN(HB): 9781529441703

I'm grateful to the publisher for giving me access to an advance e-copy of The Bewitching  to consider for review.

In The Bewitching, Silvia Moreno-Garcia deftly blends three timelines to produce a clever and suspenseful New England horror which is also fully aware of, and reflects on, the tradition of New England horror. It's not just, here is a seemingly innocent country of coasts and little towns where lurk horrors. it's, here is a country whose horrors have been written about. The implicit warning - Don't go into the scary place! - is turned inside out from the start, because for Minerva, the scary place is the point. (A point driven home by Moreno-Garcia's deployment of many modern horror authors' names as background: look out for the names of student halls, faculty, positions, awards and honours. See how many you can spot!)

In 1998, Minerva is a young graduate student at Stoneridge College, making ends meet by doing teaching jobs and supervising student accommodation. She's looking forward to some peace and quiet over the summer months to develop her thesis about cult horror writer Beatrice Tremblay, who herself studied at Stonebridge in the 1930s.

In 1934, Beatrice herself recounts the events which led up to the disappearance of her beloved Virginia - events which, decades later, she based one of her most celebrated stories on. 

And in 1908, Minerva's great-grandmother, Alba, who lives on a dull backwater farm looks forward to a visit from her beloved uncle Arturo and yearns to return with him to the bright lights of Mexico City.

Each of the three women - Minerva, Alba and Virginia - will learn dark truths about the hidden world and will have to find strength to face a haunting evil. To that degree, they're in a sense the same story, though with varying outcomes. Of course Minerva's and Beatrice's stories take place ion the same setting, with direct connections between the horrors they confront. But the stories are also very different, interestingly different, featuring women in quite varying situations.

Alba is at first naive, on the edge of womanhood and yearning for a life of glamour, as she perceives it. There's something a little too trusting about her, perhaps. Her natural rebelliousness at the chaffing rules imposed by her mother may, one feels, lead her into trouble and it's hard to be sure who her real friends are as a string of grisly calamities begins to hit the farm. To whom can she turn for help?

Minerva seems at first a more solid personality, her main difficulties when we first encounter her being a severe case of thesis block and her difficulty in accessing the private archives she needs to explore to learn more about Beatrice. When - through a fortuitous chain of events, even if one foreseen in a hint of not entirely usual powers - Minerva succeeds in persuading their dour guardian to led her read the notebooks and manuscripts that will open the way, Carolyn Yates still imposes a myriad of restrictions and limits. Carolyn, matriarch of the distinctly "old money" Yates family, also appears in her youth in the 1930s section of the book as a friend and confidante of Beatrice, albeit not perhaps the witness to events that Minerva would really have sought.

The third protagonist, Beatrice herself, is more of a witness, her later life writing horror perhaps an attempt to testify, to piece together just what happened in December 1934. (Or to atone for her part in it?) The disappearance of a young woman from college wasn't looked into particularly at the time, the blame, if blame there was, being directed at a young Mexican man. Historic prejudice joins the mix here alongside class attitudes and gender norms in twisting the direction of events (one wonders whether, if the love that may have been possible between Virginia and Beatrice had been able to develop, events would have taken quite the same turn).

To understand what is happening in each of the sections, you need to stand back and see the picture as a whole, to look for patterns. Minerva. once she realises the stakes, does just that, piecing together present day events with the wisdom of her Nana to meet the threat. Alba herself draws on reserves of courage to behave in ways her society wouldn't expect. And Beatrice, well, in her witness Beatrice warns and provides vital information.

As the threats mount in all three time periods, there is a feeling of doom - we know some of the outcomes, and there have been hints about some of the rest, so it can feel as though this is a predetermined road to death and loss. But Moreno-Garcia is adept at misdirecting the reader, or perhaps, letting their own assumptions disguise the truth, resulting a thrilling ending (or, endings) though with just a little room for doubt as to the future. 

She, herself, writes in the last sentence of her Afterword "I wear my bracelet against the veil eye pin my left hand."

Wise.

A gripping and exciting story. 

For more information about The Bewitching, see the publisher's website here.

Review - The Undercutting of Rosie and Adam

The Undercutting of Rosie and Adam

Megan Bannen
Orbit, 8 July 2025
Available as: PB, 388pp audio, e   
Source: Advance copy
ISBN(PB): 9780356521947

I'm grateful to Orbit for sending me a copy of The Undercutting of Rosie and Adam to consider for review.

This, the third and I think final (pity!) of Bannen's fantasy Western romances, revolves around Tanrian Marshal Rosie Fox (who is also a demigod, and therefore immortal) and haughty, aloof inventor Dr Adam Lee, the man who invented the portals that give access to the magic-touched world of Tanria.

Always a bit error-prone, as we've seen before, now the portals seem to be failing completely, and Rosie and Adam may hold the key to restoring them. It's a shame that something - oh, say, unresolved romantic tension - is stopping them working together smoothly...

The Undercutting of Rosie and Adam is, I think, the best book yet in this series (which is saying something, given how good The Undertaking of Hart and Mercy and The Undermining of Twyla and Frank were). Not only is there full-blooded, smouldering romance between Rosie and Adam, but Rosie's difficult backstory is sensitively shown. Just imagine being a demigod, daughter of a good-for-nothing trickster god and a sentimental but mortal mother. The passage of time means you'll lose anyone you ever get close to - first, your adored parent, then any lover, friend or colleague, all will go the same way. Apart from that abandoning father who always turn up just when he's not wanted.

Bannen has taken care to give this world, the archipelago of the Federated Islands of Cadmus and its surrounding continents, a true sense of reality and a history and culture - the last hundred years, which Rosie recalls, have seen development so that her memories of her early life with her mum have a sepia tinge, a kind of fin de siècle quality that evokes well both the rose tinted view we often have of childhood, and the quainter pleasures of a more gilded age to which modern day Cadmus looks back wistfully.

If Rosie's missing her mum, who died decades ago, she she's resentful of her dad, not least as she blames him for the grinding poverty in which she grew up (well, he is a Trickster).

This book is I think the most unapologetically "fantasy" of Bannen's three stories. As with Cadmus, she's so far sketched in and shown the mythological background to her works, and there have been a few divine or semi divine traces, but in The Undercutting of Rosie and Adam reality, at least in Tanria, begins to shift and it's all traceable to the doings of the gods and powers. There are obscure rules in play, debts and prices have been incurred, and Rosie's about to have to deal with the consequences, even though they're not her fault. As if her complex love life, and her difficult relationship with her boss weren't enough (each time Rosie dies on duty it's such a pain for her boss! Think of the paperwork and the H&S issues!)

At the same time it's thoroughgoing romance as the two bickering protagonists are forced together in a chi-chi rural destination retreat, albeit with some unwelcome colleagues for company. Unless they can work out what's gone wrong with the portals, none of them will ever get out!

All in all, great fun, with an ending I didn't see coming. I will be sad to have to leave Cadmus (though, hopeful to find my way back there one day).

Finally, now the sequence is finished, I'd just like to give credit to Lisa Maria Pompilio for her beautiful covers. Just look at them next to each other and you'll see a pattern - a brilliant interpretation of the themes of the books.

Hoping for more like this from Orbit!

For more information about The Undercutting of Rosie and Adam, see the publisher's website here. 

Blogtour review - The Great Deception by Syd Moore

The Great Deception (Section W)
Syd Moore
Magpie (Oneworld), 4 September 2025
Available as: PB, 328pp audio, e   
Source: Advance copy
ISBN(PB): 9780861548PB

I'm grateful to the publisher for sending me a copy of The Great Deception to consider for review, and to Anne Cater for inviting me to join the book's blogtour.

Sequel to The Grand Illusion, The Great Deception is Moore's continuation of the story of Daphne Devine. As prequels set several decades before her Essex Witches novels, I simply had to read to these book, and they don't disappoint.

The Great Deception finds Daphne assigned on a dangerous mission in Iceland as part of her work for Section W, the branch of Second World War British military intelligence tasked with all things supernatural - or potentially supernatural. Here, the ostensible target is a clairvoyant, Karlsson, who may or may not be able to foretell the future and may or may not be passing secrets to the Germans. Britain has occupied Ireland to prevent it being used as a German base, but the position of the island hangs in the balance, so anything that could tip things one way or another might be very important.

The story intrigues in a number of ways. First, Daphne herself, as Moore draws her, is a fascinating character, a very strong and strong-minded woman in an age which is still deeply, deeply patriarchal. The officers with whom she deals here are clearly not comfortable with an intelligent, assertive woman and even Septimus, who will be important to her future, doesn't treat her well. Yet Daphne persists. Next, this is a genuinely interesting and eye-opening exploration of a little known aspect of WW2. The whole occupation of Iceland, going rather against the grain of the early war, raises intriguing questions of power and collaboration which we normally see from a rather different perspective. The situation of Iceland itself is also interesting, a very poor country at the time and also a remote one but not, of course, subject to the same restrictions (or to attacks) as Britain itself so rather a haven for Daphne.

Finally, there's the whole magic/ supernatural angle. Books about WW2 magic are starting to appear in numbers, I think perhaps Syd Moore set a trend here, but readers of the earlier story and of course the Essex Witch novels will know that this author is then canny about how she uses the idea of magic. You never quite know what to believe - and that goes as much for Daphne as for us!

So when Daphne decides - and she does take the decision, in the end she choose not to trust the chain of command - that urgent action is needed, and forms her own small taskforce to undertake it, much of the focus in the story is on the material factors: the cold, availability of food, the strained relations between Daphne, her local contact Anna, their minder Björn and of course Karlssen. Daphne's forced to pick her way through what is a tense and thriller-y novel, chasing down leads and pursuing the truth - all while surviving threats from Nazi agents and the condescension of her own superiors.

Whether there's a real supernatural threat is another thing entirely, but even here, Daphne has her instincts which, we know, have guided her before. In the land of the Northern Lights, and approaching a a region rumoured to be the home of dark magic and of evil, anything may be possible.

I really enjoyed The Great Deception. It's a story with great drive - you WILL keep turning these pages - and very solidly located in its time and place, as well as having a real element of jeopardy and danger. Daphne's wrestling with guilt at some of the things she's done and at other she may have to: and there is business here that she darkly accepts she will have to deal with later, once the immediate danger is over. The story is also though, in places, very funny! 

For more information about The Great Deception, see the publisher's website here - and of course the other stops on the blogtour which you can see listed on the poster below. 

You can buy The Great Deception from your local high street bookshop or online from Bookshop UK, Hive Books, Blackwell's, Foyle's, WH Smith, or Waterstones.

Blogtour Review - The Crooked Medium's Guide to Murder by Stephen Cox

The Crooked Medium's Guide to Murder
Stephen Cox
Self-published, 1 September 2025
Available as: PB, 394pp, e   
Source: Advance copy
ISBN(PB): 9781068164408 

I'm grateful to Anne and Stephen for sending me a copy of The Crooked Medium's Guide to Murder to consider for review, and for inviting me to join the book's blogtour.

Stephen Cox has previously written a heartwarming two part SF story Our Child of the Stars/ Our Child of Two Worlds about the arrival of an orphaned alien child, the humans who take him in, and the difference that makes to the world's future. He's one of those authors that I was keenly waiting for more from, so I was pleased to see The Crooked Medium's Guide forthcoming, something in quite a different vein but still - I'd say - with a sense of family, of community, at its heart and still told from the perspective of the underdog.

Mrs Ashton is though, at first, a hard underdog to like! She is the crooked medium of the title, a convinced Spiritualist but a fraud who does NOT converse with spirits, though she has another gift, the ability to "open up" subjects and read their minds. This enables her, often, to perceive enough to convince. Sometimes, she can do genuine good, but her willingness to break into minds without consent is troubling to put it mildly.

As is her willingness to pilfer, forge and leave a trail of debtors behind.

Mrs Ashton is aided in her endeavours by the formidable Mrs Bradshaw - Braddie - a Scot who's often exasperated, and often willing to give unpalatable advice, which is generally ignored. She regards the risks that Mrs Ashton runs as unconscionable, and her gloomy warnings prove wise over the course of this novel. 

The two women are lovers, something that must, in the high Victorian age, be kept as the strictest secret, and Cox is good on both their physical relationship and the strain that this necessary discretion places on their relationship. There are some touching passages here, especially where he shows us Mrs B worrying over Mrs A, her "hinny" and recognising how she's being manipulated by the other woman.

The third member of the detective trio (as it turns out to be) is Maisie, a poor girl with a difficult family who acts as the other womens' bodyguard, spy and general fixer. Maisie is sharp and cynical, with a host of connections and contacts in the East End - and she's having none of Mrs Ashton's nonsense.

While a lengthy history of close brushes with the law is implied, putting the two older women at odds with a hostile Press and police, the central action in The Crooked Medium's Guide concerns an aristocrat, Lady Violet, who comes to Mrs Ashton for help with her abusive husband Sir Charles Barrington-Stewart, a rising MP. Though warned by Braddie to have no part of the affair, Ashton refuses to drop it and follows the Barrington-Stewarts to their country house where, naturally, murder follows. 

From this point the book is in whodunnit mode as Ashton and Braddie race to clear their name, while a distinguished Scotland Yard detective has the opposite intention. I loved the complexity of the resulting situation, which takes in the closed society of the Big House, previous crimes that Sir Charles may or may not have committed, and a perplexed spirit who - to her horror - begins appearing to Mrs Ashton. None of the information adds up, Mrs Ashton's creditors are circling and a key witness has disappeared. 

I think that credible and interesting stories often follow from characters in tight situations, people subject to constraints, and with Mrs Ashton especially, Cox gives us this in abundance. As if being a woman isn't enough in patriarchal Victorian society, Mrs Ashton is already suspected of fraud and of not paying her debts; her Spiritualism puts her at odds with the Establishment, and the loyal servants of Corwood Manor are suspicious. We are also shown hostile press accounts of her doings - clearly the crooked medium is newsworthy.

Yet she continues, winning over a person here, a person there, deploying her gift of "opening up", latching onto what little actual evidence there is and pursuing a shrewd series of deductions as to what really happened. Perhaps not likeable at first, Mrs Ashton - and her accomplices - did bring me round in a story that's mysterious, driven and, above all, great fun to read.

While most of the action is seen from the viewpoint of Mrs Ashton, and the story is always at its most vivid then, there are sections shown for example from the perspective of the detective or one of the Corwood servants and also from Maisie's. We also get to see a number of others representing something of the diversity of the Victorian Metropolis - I hope and expect that Cox is planning further episodes in this world because while some of the characters we meet, such as Dongmei Li and her family, fascinate they don't appear much - I hope they're being set up for future episodes. 

For more information about The Crooked Medium's Guide to Murder or to buy the book (you should!) see the author's website here - and of course don't miss the other stops on the blogtour which you can see listed on the poster below. 

Blogtour - Extract from The Winter Warriors by Olivier Norek

The Winter Warriors
Oliview Norek (trans by Nick Caistor)
Open Borders Press, 11 September 2025
Available as: HB, 448pp, audio, e   
ISBN(HB): 978-1916788763

I'm delighted today to be hosting an extract from Olivier Norek's new historical novel, The Winter Warriors. 

The story...

November, 1939. A conscription officer arrives in the peaceful farming village of Rautjärvi. The Soviet Union has invaded, and for the first time in its history as an independent country, Finland is at war.

Setting off into the depths of winter to face the Red Army, the small group of childhood friends recruited from Rautjärvi have no idea whether any of them will ever return home. But their unit has a secret weapon: the young sniper Simo Häyhä, whose lethal skill in the snow-bound forests of the front line will earn him the nickname “The White Death”.

Drawing on the real-life figures and battles of the Finnish-Soviet Winter War, this is a gripping, page-turning historical thriller from one of Europe’s most acclaimed storytellers.

Olivier Norek

The author...

After 18 years in the French police force, Olivier Norek turned to crime writing - Between Two Worlds was the Times and Sunday Times Crime Novel of the Year 2024. The Winter Warriors is his first historical thriller. While researching for this novel, Norek spent three months (the duration of the war itself) in Finland, experiencing the -35°C conditions in which the war was fought and in which more than 130,000 Russian soldiers died before the Soviet Union signed a peace treaty in March 1940.

The extract...

First Prologue

Light streams over his closed eyes, over his prostrate body and its stilled heart. 

All around him, the last day of war has littered the ground with bodies in their thousands, staining the snow red. Amongst the other corpses, he is no-one. No more precious, no more impor- tant. Elsewhere, he could be a father, a brother, a friend, a husband. Elsewhere, he is everything. 

In death, only their uniforms set them apart. They were ene- mies, now they lie side by side. Here, hands touch; elsewhere, lifeless faces confront each other. They have spent the whole winter killing one another. 

The dead from earlier weeks are half-hidden in the earth. Only vestiges remain: still visible helmets, occasionally parts of their backs. Their arms are like aerial roots, as if growing out of the ground itself, ready to rise, get to their feet, and haunt all those who decided on this war. 

Their blood saturates the ground, their flesh nourishes the trees, mingles with the sap. They will be in every new leaf, every new bud. There were more than a million of them, and when, tomorrow and beyond tomorrow, the wind blows through the branches of the forests of Finland, it will also carry their voices.

There had been happy days, a cherished peace.

There had been a before, in the days leading up to the Hell. 

Second Prologue 

For many years Finland belonged to someone else.

For centuries, it formed part of the kingdom of Sweden. For a further century, it came under Russia’s sovereignty. It was not until 1917 that it gained independence. 

In 1939, therefore, Finland was 22 years old. Twenty-two years are hardly sufficient to make a man, let alone a country. 

In a storm of lead and fire, Stalin’s Red Army, the largest in the world, swept through this neutral, poorly armed nation, launching a bloody conflict known by history as the Winter War. 

The hellish events that are the subject of this novel took place in that year of 1939 at Kollaa in Finland. But also on its isthmus, in Karelia. On the ice fields at Petsamo. From the shores of its gulf to the distant reaches of Lapland. 

Imagine a tiny country. Imagine a huge one. Now imagine them clashing. 

Twenty million shells. The Earth almost cracked in two when Russia pounded its crust in the same place day after day for more than a hundred days. 

Tank columns against old-fashioned rifles. A million Red Army soldiers against workers and peasants. But past conflicts tell us it takes five soldiers to face a single man fighting for his land, his home country and his own people, hands clutching his carbine, a sentinel behind the door of his barricaded farm. 

And a single man can change the course of history. 

At the heart of the harshest of its winters,

at the heart of the bloodiest war in its history,

Finland saw the birth of a legend.

The legend of Simo Häyhä, the White Death.

And yet there had once been happy days, a cherished peace. There had been a before, in the days leading up to the Hell. 

For more information about The Winter Warriors, see the publisher's website here - and of course the other stops on the blogtour which you can see listed on the poster below. 

You can buy The Winter Warriors from your local high street bookshop or online from Bookshop UK, Hive Books, Blackwell's, Foyle's, WH Smith or Waterstones.

Review - Clown Town by Mick Herron

Clown Town

Mick Herron
Baskerville, 11 September 2025 
Available as: HB, 340pp, audio, e   
Source: Advance copy
ISBN(HB): 9781399800433  

I'm grateful to Baskerville for sending me an advance copy of Clown Town to consider for review.

Clown Town sees a full return to Slough House for Herron after last year's sort-of Jackson Lamb backstory, The Secret Hours. And this is a familiar Slough House, an office gone bad, a dusty, sticky, despair-haunted tomb for the careers of its crew of Service internal exiles.

Yes, the gang's all here again, River, not yet back on active duty after his brush with novichok; Louisa; Roddy; Lech; Roddy Ho; newcomer Ash; Catherine; and, of course, Lamb himself. All the Slow Horses are ready to go... slowly.

And yet. I wouldn't have thought this possible, but the Slough House we see here is actually less jolly, more bleak - somehow - than in the earlier books. It's as though Lamb has, somehow, brought back extra weights from the past Berlin of The Secret Hours, weights that drag on the spirit and chill the mind. Perhaps it's that the Slow Horses are reeling from the losses and near losses they have suffered. From missing faces and empty office chairs. The attrition has been brutal - surely one of the perks of being a down-and-out on Spook Street is that you're insignificant, gently rotting down a side alley, of no interest to the Big Men (and Women) who hunt down the main drag?

Of course that's not how it's turned out, and maybe Lamb's lot are starting to realise. Whatever, when the shadow of past Service malpractice arises, when Peter Judd begins to stir, when Taverner starts to weave her threads, there's more than a smidgen of wariness to be seen. Plus, with key members of the team signed off, pondering jumping ship, or (Louisa) actually resigned, the response to these challenges is particularly fragmented. More so than ever, I felt myself muttering "just walk away". Even Lamb seems, if such a thing were possible, less enthusiastic than normal to look under stones and join dots.

The story kicks off from a minor discrepancy in the library of River's grandfather, the OB, as reassembled in a spook-linked Oxford college. River, still, as I said, signed off, has time to look into this, and it shouldn't open any forbidden doors, should it? Well, of course it does, and we soon discover that Slough House isn't the only scrapyard for the Service's embarrassments. So that's two teams turning through the dustbins on Spook Street, but there are actually more, and there'll be encounters, near misses and misunderstandings.

The ending of the book is of a piece with that. There's a glorious (gloriously written, not a triumphant event) - a marvellous performance by not just the Slow Horses but by several other teams of clowns, which must have been a real swine for ringmaster Herron to write; a tour de force of incompetence, dark humour, muddled motives and bad luck - but that isn't the climax of the book, it delivers another sucker punch just when you think things can't get darker, leaving the already tarnished morality of this world even more shabby at the end.

A gripping, twisty and melancholy story, though one often enlivened by Herron's deadpan humour (the highpoint of which was, for me, the song that goes through Roddy's head. It sounded familiar to me. Where have I heard it? On TV somewhere, perhaps...)

For more information about Clown Town, see the publisher's website here.