Disordered Daggers : Nobody Walks by Mick Herron (2015)
Mick Herron takes a side step from his ongoing Slough House spy thrillers with this short, bleak novel, set in the same world. It’s a man on a mission story, the man being the former undercover cop turned Service enforcer Bettany, seeking answers for the death of his estranged son. Gripped me like a vice, all the way through to the nihilistic ending, and I thoroughly enjoyed Mick Herron’s descriptions of twenty first century London and the behaviour of its inhabitants (“London swam into focus, familiar but strange at once. A video panel on a nearby litter bin streamed a live news channel, while over the road a Victorian lamp post’s curves were ornate as a hatstand. It was as if portals into the past, or future, kept opening.”)