Spook Street (Slough House book 4) by Mick Herron (book review).

Unusual for a ‘Slough House’ thriller, Jackson Lamb is missing from the first third of this book, ‘Spook Street’. Instead, a car bomb explosion in London introduces us to the new MI5 operatives sent to Slough House. Writer Mick Herron’s text takes on a more serious tone and less humour.

Whether this is the absence of Lamb is uncertain, but we do get more character insight. If there is a problem, and I’ll use Roderick Ho as the example here, it is that when you read about his life, it doesn’t tend to say ‘a creep’ as others see him. If anything, outside of his computer activities, I would probably have described him as a big-headed fantasist, which is the description used at the end of the book.

As the stories tend to centre around River Cartwright, his main problem now is his grandfather, David, who clearly is getting dementia and leaving his gun outside its safe box. Is he right? Well, someone arrives at the door claiming he’s his grandson, and he’s not so sure who it is. When the real River arrives, he finds a dead body in the bath and has a lot to do.

Like with the TV adaptation, there is a jump to Jackson Lamb getting a call to go to Cartwright’s house, where there is a dead body in the bath with its face blown off that he says is River. What he tells the chief dog and ex-Met, Emma Flyte, and what he does are two different things. David Cartwright wasn’t totally gone on who he shot, and River masquerades as Adam Lockhead, the dead man’s alias, to get to the bottom of things and takes his place, going to France, following the few clues he’s got.

Tavener, meanwhile, has to explain to her new boss, Claude Whelan, that the identity of the bomb was Robert Winter, one of three dead body histories kept alive, i.e., kept up to date, for possible use. Five had nothing to do with the bombing, but the revealing of this would compromise them. Of the other two histories, another one is called Adam Lockhead.

In France, River Cartwright has established there was a spy cell there, but its big house had been burnt down. Bertrand was there under the Lockheed name.

The reveal of what is really going on in France is part of the same kind of thing called Project Cuckoo, the training of agents in a different country’s protocols in an especially built and manned village. The only difference here is the training started young and in a large French house. Actually, this isn’t new. The original ‘Mission: Impossible’ TV series did an episode based on this back in the 1960s, although it was the IMF who invaded it and masqueraded as Russians acting as Americans.

It’s interesting that the old people’s home for spies is noted early on and now defunct. It was a place in Scotland and was the inspiration for The Village in ‘The Prisoner’.

Your security clearance still isn’t high enough to be briefed on spoilers here. It’s enough to know that an element of this school went rogue and, instead of testing terrorist regimes, did it for real. What followed was a cleaning-up plan.

Herron writes this story more as a detective story, something which he is more tied to than espionage stories. He’s building up clues all the time, so you have to pay attention to what is going on. Just make sure you have an hour to read the last hundred pages in one go.

Now, let’s move on to the TV adaptation. I saw some differences in the ending. The school unit actually removes more terrorists than just practice, which is significant. Lamb definitely shows elements of respect for his rejects; otherwise, he could have reported River Cartwright as soon as he went off the grid. I looked at the various reasons why the rejects were there in the first place.

Some, like Cartwright, are there for fouling up on a job, so you would expect them to have learnt from their previous mistakes. The problem with Herron’s books is that making even a single mistake is unacceptable, which seems odd since everyone makes mistakes occasionally. One would expect that the gambling and addictive personalities would have been identified during the security clearance process. You should read the book before watching it.

GF Willmetts

September 2025

(pub: Baskerville, 2017, this release 2022. 340 page small enlarged paperback. Price: varies but I got mine in a wrap. ISBN: 978-1-3299-90397-6).

check out website: www.johnmurraypress.co.uk/landing-page/baskerville-imprint/