Warwick's Reviews > London Rules

One of the flabbier entries in the Slough House series, this relies on what by now seems to be a formula in Herron's plotting (there are some terrorists, the slow horses flail around, they accidentally save the day, it turns out to be an inside job, there is a government cover-up, Lamb does a fart) as well as in his writing (cross-cutting exhaustingly between different viewpoints of a single brief incident).

The plots of these books are cartoonishly unrealistic, and tend to substitute blanket cynicism for any real insight into how things work. (It's fascinating to compare Herron's plots with those of Will Smith and his team for the excellent Apple TV series, which is often obliged to rearrange things extensively in order to make sense.) This is one reason why I find the comparisons with Le Carré so baffling; another is that Le Carré was a genuine prose stylist, whereas Herron can be clumsy. He seems confused by the difference between the simple past and the past participle:

…evenings had followed afternoons had followed mornings, and during none of them had she drank.

Seeing mistakes like this in a book that's already on its twenty-third edition just makes me feel depressed about publishing (not to mention literacy). Still, what Herron is very good at is character (Jackson Lamb remains a superb creation, and every page he's on is a treat) and comic writing: there are still plenty of one-liners and comebacks in here that made me smile with appreciation. On the whole, though, this one felt a bit like it was assembled to order.