Nobody Walks: Mick Herron

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With Driscoll having recently been vetted for national honours, Dame Ingrid Tearney wants to deal with the situation very discreetly, so she enlists JK Coe, a still wet-behind-the-ears officer from Psych Eval, to act as go-between. This is not like the Slough House series, except for some of the wonderful turns of phrase and some of the grittier action. But more than a few people are interested to hear Bettany is back in town, from incarcerated mob bosses to those in the highest echelons of MI5. There is plenty of action, some unexpected twists and humour (albeit more subtle than in the Slough House series) before all the pieces slot into place for Tom.

His wife had died of cancer a few years ago, so the death of his son is a powerful drawcard to bring Tom home to England. Because it's relatively short, it seemed a lot more focused than some of the Slough House novels, and that sets it up amongst my favourites from Herron.

In 2022 I re-read Nobody Walks (2015) as part of a re-read of all of Mick Herron's Slough House books.

Nobody Walks is a completely independent novel even though its MI5 is the same as the one in Herron's Slough House series. It reminded me a lot of The Spy Who Came In from the Cold, with its complex motivations and use of an agent perhaps past his best-before date.

His work has won the CWA Gold Dagger for Best Crime Novel, the Steel Dagger for Best Thriller, and the Ellery Queen Readers Award, and been nominated for the Macavity, Barry, Shamus, and Theakstons Novel of the Year Awards. Once upon a time, Bettany had gone undercover to put the McGarry Brothers in jail for their contribution to The Troubles. And this remained the legal truth of the matter, as the things in question were taking place some distance below that. Oskar has stood shoulder-to-shoulder with him in the lean years, broken legs when leg breaking was needed, but had lately taken to saying things like Sure, Boss? Suspicion lands on Vincent Driscoll, Liam's rather odd games-designer boss, and this raises a red flag for MI5.

The source alone flags the information with a high index of suspicion, so Bettany sets out to verify, while ensuring to stay under the radar of the various parties eager to get up close and physical with him. For fans of the Slough House series I would consider it essential for its introduction of Dame Ingrid and JK Coe. Even if Slough House means nothing to you I'd still recommend Nobody Walks as a standalone thriller. H]ere under Regent’s Park, some floors below the one at which she alighted now, various events had occurred in recent years which it was occasionally her duty to deny had ever taken place. Bettany might have thought he’d left it all behind when he first skipped town, but nobody ever really walks away.Although Herron’s sly sense of humor occasionally slips through, he can’t help himself, for the most part this is a sleek, taut revenge story that heads towards its inevitable conclusion. Like a tethered goat, “Dame Spook” uses the gullible JK Coe of Psych Eval as her go-between and Bettany – signalling Coe’s eventual fate as a “Slow Horse”.