I think "London Rules" is the best Slough House book so far. It brings together the same elements used in the earlier books but each element has grown stronger, is used with greater assurance and has been combined with its peers perfectly to make the ultimate Slough House book.

"London Rules" has a violent prologue that reminded me of one of those young woman / old woman optical illusion drawings. I saw the scene perfectly in my head,   tragic but familiar, up until the last paragraph, when everything changed and yet everything remained the same. This way of leading me to see the familiar differently and surprise me while he does it, it what makes Mick Herron's Slough House books so appealing.

After the prologue, the book returns to the usual pattern of starting and ending with an almost whimsically lyrical description of Slough House. This time it is not the wind that is visiting Slough House but personifications of Dawn and Day and Dusk. These pieces are well enough written to be memorable in their own right but they are more closely integrated into the story's content and tone than in earlier books so that what might seem sardonically decorative becomes a kind of Greek Chorus, obliquely guiding the reader.

One of the things I enjoy about the Slough House books is how fearlessly, sometimes even viciously, they comment on the current British political culture. The most brutal and most nuanced assaults are made by Jackson Lamb and so might be seen as part of his irascible persona ("There's a Donal Trump Junior?", Lamb said, "And just when I thought things couldn't get any worse.") but the disdain for the people who made insanity of Brexit and Trump possible is shared by most of the characters in the book except for the shamelessly self-serving Pols themselves.  

This contemporary pulse-taking is also more than decorative. It provides the issues that drive the plot, giving the plot more credibility and showing us the damage that these people of "middling ability but supreme self-confidence"  are doing to us.

The plot is clever and is rolled out with such skill that events continue both to make sense and to surprise. The tension is high right up to the final page. There is intrigue and violence and betrayal and that's just between people on the same side. The terrorist threat here is sadly credible and disturbingly plausible.

I've seen American booksellers refer to the Slough House books as the "Jackson Lamb Series". This labelling demonstrates the same unwillingness to embrace what English books are really about that led to US publishers changing "Rivers of London" to "Midnight Riot" and "The Philosopher's Stone" becoming "The Sorcerer's Stone", because the crowning glory of the Slough House books are the characters that populate them.

Jackson Lamb's gravity bends the orbit of the people around him and sets the rhythm of their lives but these books are not really about him. They are about the idea behind Slough House, a purgatory for spook screw-ups, the people that would stay in such a place and the culture that would find such a place necessary.

The result is an ensemble cast inside both Slough House and Regent's Park (where the shiny, haven't-screwed-up-yet spies live) that gets stronger with every book. 

In "London Rules" we do see more deeply into Jackson Lamb but we spend most of our time looking through the eyes of broken spies, whether they live in Slough House or not, and see how they live with the war between their weaknesses and their hopes. We learn a lot about desperation and self-delusion, leavened occasionally with a little hope. I particularly enjoyed seeing Roddie Ho so deeply engaged in self-deception that he becomes impervious to interrogation techniques designed to play on his fear and doubt. 

"London Rules" is an excellent spy novel and a good action-packed thriller but it is also a mirror to our current times and an invitation to recognise that self-delusion, confidence without ability and the pursuit of personal power at the expense of personal integrity are a plague on our society.

In the murky world of the British secret service, there’s a tacit understanding that everyone plays by London Rules. These aren’t the ones neatly compiled in official binders. No, these are the unwritten rules, the real ones.  #1: Cover your arse.

And when it comes to MI5, it doesn’t matter whether you work at Regent’s Park or Slough House. The former is where all the cool kids get to be spies. The latter is home to agents who’ve screwed up royally but can’t legally (or at least, quietly) be killed.

As the book opens, Regent’s is on high alert. A group of armed men drove into the centre of a village in Derbyshire & opened fire. People died, the men vanished & Islamic State claimed responsibility.

News of the attack doesn’t exactly brighten the current mood In the UK. The public is still bitterly divided over Brexit, right wing politicians are pushing their xenophobic agenda & previous attacks have left everyone a tad jumpy. MI5 desperately needs a win but before they literally have a clue, a second attack takes more lives. Regent’s Park #2 Diana Taverner is running on fumes & the last thing she needs is to deal with Slough House’s resident fossil, Jackson Lamb.

Lamb’s not sure if he has a problem or not. It seems someone may have tried to run over Roddy Ho. “The Rodman” (as he thinks of himself) is Slough House’s IT guy. He has 2 gifts. The first is his way with computers. The second is an unshakeable belief he’s a chick magnet with basic social skills. Lamb’s at a loss. Why would a stranger want to kill Ho? He’d understand if it was someone who knew him. Everyone at Slough House has thought of killing The Rodman, pretty much on a daily basis. Colleague Shirley Dander was the one who saved him & she’s already apologized.

From these 2 threads the story goes haring off in multiple directions before doubling back to give you the big picture. There are several new characters added to the returning cast of (ir)regulars & as usual, not everyone will survive. A couple of things make this outing a little different than the others. We get more one-on-one time with each of the Slow Horses as they reflect on personal problems & the remnants of their career. These more serious moments add layers that make us sympathize with their situations. Well…except Ho. But you do have to admire his refusal to let reality dent his delusions. Herron also shines a light on current issues such as government bureaucracy, the rise of overt racism & how easily the media can influence & manipulate public opinion.

I don’t have a great track record when it comes to slowly savouring Herron’s books & once again I failed. It was just too damn good to put down. It’s well paced & full of colourful characters. Many come across as thinly veiled stand-ins for some of the country’s well known figures & you get the sense it’s Herron’s chance to take satirical jabs at some of the ridiculous behaviour of late. The dialogue is clever & frequently laugh out loud funny. Each of the characters has a personal tic that helps bring them to life or in the case of Lamb, a whole herd of them. They alone ensure this is an entertaining read. What elevates the book is smart, intricate plotting that will have you scratching your noggin as you try to figure out how the story lines tie together.

This is book #5 of what has become my favourite series (Heron also has a number of stand-alones). I adore black humour & for my book dollars, you can’t beat smart & funny. So…you may have caught that I’m a fan but this is just me babbling. If you’re interested, pick up “Slow Horses” & see if it suits.

Before I go, I’d like to apply what I learned here & add 2 new rules to the playbook: Never turn your back on a can of paint. Avoid penguins.

Oof. This is gonna be a tough one to review. 

First, it should be known that I was not looking forward to this book. Nothing about it called to me. Nothing about the film adaptation ever made me want to watch the movie, either. (Let it be known that I still have no interest in watching the movie.) And if it weren't for this John Irving Challenge I'm doing, where I'm trying to read all of his novels in a year's time, I likely never would have picked this up. Do I regret reading it? Yes and no. Let's discuss, shall we?

I hated the first chapter and a half of The Cider House Rules. I've come to expect that I'm gonna be pretty confused for the first fifty to a hundred pages of an Irving novel. Usually the stuff at the beginning doesn't pay off until halfway through the book, and sometimes he makes you wait until the very end before he returns to why the opening chapter was needed. Here, I never felt like that opening chapter was needed, not to mention the chapter is just fuckin boring to read. We could've easily opened with Chapter Two (Larch's history) and then summarized the info from Chapter One into the beginning of Chapter Three. That's how I would've done it, anyway.

I only really liked one of the characters, and it wasn't until Homer started learning from Larch that I really started to care for her. I never once cared about Homer, period. For a main character, dude was surprisingly weak. And him constantly answering everything with "Right" got on my nerves as much as it got on Wally's nerves. I was thrilled when Wally finally decked him in his cocksucker. Which brings me to Authorial Intent. Did Irving mean for Homer to be an annoyingly weak character? I believe he did. Doesn't mean I have to like it, though. It only means Irving possibly accomplished what he set out to do. Bravo, or, you know, whatever.

My favorite character throughout the entire mess was Melony. She rocked. I dig a multi-layered strongly-developed female character and Melony checked all of those boxes. Lorna and her love story was beautiful and heartbreaking, and I'm glad Irving took the time to follow Melony's storyline all the way to the end. I was worried that there for a moment the book would end on Homer, and I thought, "Fuck everything about this book." Then Irving brought it all home and I was graciously satisfied.

Oddly enough, despite the exclusion of wrestling and bears, this was Irving's most repetitive work. I've read about all of these characters before, some more than once, and I think that's why I didn't give a fuck for any of them. They all felt like carbon copies of better-drawn characters from earlier novels. Irving just changed their names and put them in a different story. 

Some other aspects of Irving's work has become predictable, too; mainly who will live and die by the end of the book. He sets up character's deaths the same way each and every time, and the formula has become irritatingly obvious. A major character's death was ruined for me in this book because of Irving's signature phoning-in of plot points. This isn't a thriller, the book does not depend on surprises, but I'd still appreciate not being able to see certain things coming.

As with all of Irving's novels, this one relies heavily on a strong ending. The middle of the book is a padded mess, detailing long stretches of time I didn't give a single shit about. These lengthy chapters are further rendered pointless when, later in the book, Irving skips ahead in time fifteen years. If he could skip fifteen years of a child's life and still make us care for the kid, why couldn't he find a better way of telling of Wally's time in Burma succinctly? What a clusterfuck of odd details that chapter was. And if Irving's able to skip fifteen years in the life, why drone on and on about the day to day life of orchard workers when, by the end of the book, none of it really matters? Why? Because Irving cares about what Irving cares about. These are, first and foremost, his books, and he will write them how he sees fit. He also know that, (again) by the end of the book, you won't give a shit about the bloated middle. By the time you flip that final page, you will be basking in the glow of an ending so well told that you will let slide all the times you were bored, even if that time was less than a hundred pages ago. Yes, the ending is that strong. Irving's endings always are. 

In summation: Nowhere near his best work, but much better than his debut novel, Setting Free the Bears. So far in my challenge, I've thought, "I will reread this book at some point in my life," but I will never reread this one. It was a chore just finishing it the first time. Recommended for Irving completionists and fans of apples and abortions.

Final Judgment: Show up for the coming-of-age aspects that Irving does so well, and stay for Melony and Lorna's story.