A familiar face at a funeral sets off the appalling Jackson Lamb, despatching his Slow Horses to settle a score. There's a missing teenager and a new face in whose transgression is particularly nasty even for Slough House, and it all comes down to a snow-bound chase through deepest darkest Wales. Oooh, this one left a mark.

Decided to have a relisten, this is the one with the snowy shenanigans in Wales and Lamb being exceptionally vile.

Punished for messing up, or just for seeing the wrong thing, the Secret Service rejects of Slough House have to put up with drudgery and monotony and bouts of verbal abuse from Jackson Lamb, but every now and then stuff happens, often as not a series of disasters that all roll down on Slough House, but at least it makes a break. Their current circle of hell is being digitally wiped from Service records and basically no longer existing, even though ex Slow Horses are starting to turn up dead in a way suggestive of a highly trained hit-team. First Desk Diana Taverner, boss and nemesis, has made some deals and made some plays and Jackson Lamb isn't having it. 

Since I've been reading lots of Dorothy Dunnett, Jasckson Lamb is like if Monsignor Jordan de Riberac was a washed up old secret agent put behind a desk to torment a bunch of screw-ups. He will make your life hell if you work for him, but he will allso make your life, and possibly your death, hell if you mess with him or the people who work for him. Either way, hell follows.

Speaking of Dunnett, ouch that ending. 

Latest installment 'bout the Sloughiest of Houses and the reason I'm listening to most of the rest on audio. Nasty political advisor to the PM gets up to nasty business, Slough House stumbles into the mounting chaos and gives it a shove. In some ways these are an amazing exploration of modern human inadequacy, helplessness and sense of encroaching doom, and you can usually tell who the villains are by the ones who don't feel them so much, and Roddy Ho.

Relistened to this, why not, and loved Shirley Danders acheiving full apotheosis as action hero, albeit in a way that makes you worry Herron might be setiing the reader up for horrible heartbreak, the way he sometimes does.

Listened to an audio version of this story. I first read this many many years ago and it has haunted me ever since, and I'm glad to say it's as good as I remember. A missing family in Yellowstone Park, a case of bubonic plague, a boy raised by coyotes, and underground war fought in the tunnels of Vietnam all combine to create something difficult ro define, but moving, and disturbing, and awe-inspiring, and horrifying.

Genuinely delicious and fascinating mystery novel that utterly perturbs and bewilders the reader. A story about an amateur dramatic society might be enough for some, a story about an appeal for aid for a sick child might be enough for some, a story about people returning from time spent working as medical volunteers in violent parts of the world might be enough for some, but here we have all three, and one or two more, woven together fiendishly through an epistolary narrative of emails and text messages into a complex tale that keeps the reader guessing until the final solution is presented. 

A genuinely sad and depressing piece of work, it probably wasn't a barrel of laughs to begin with but these days the utter philistinism and pointlessness of the acts of the super-wealthy would get anyone down. Mr Boy's arrested development isn't the worse modification - but subjecting your kid to medcial treatments to keep them twelve is honestly the rottenest thing and turning yourself into a replica of the statue of liberty doesn't even come across as some sort of performance art, just showing off your narcissism. There's nothing aesthetic or expressive or compulsive about the body modifications on display, it's all pure childishness, and really, really ugly. So, yeah. One of those stories that works almost too well at what it sets out to do. Yuck.

A naked body without a face is discovered on Cat's building site, and all work is cancelled, putting the project and her finances at risk. Unwillingly, she asks Marwood for a favour, to look into it and put pressure on the magistrayte to allow work to continue. Instead, he turns up two missing men, either of whim could be the victim, and connections that go right to the heart of the royal court, where a young Frenchwoman in dire straits has but one chance to secure any sort of future. 

Superbly plotted whodunnit set in London in the aftermath of the Great Fire with two plausibly clever and endearingly flawed protagonsists.

Another devious, cunning, intricate, epic tale of lies and unreliable narrators and misdirection and multiple plot twists that keeps the audio book nailed to the ears from Hallett, who has become an unmissable writer. 

A true crime writer decides to explore the case of the Alperton angels, a strange cult that committed mass suicide, leavng htee dead - or was it four - and two young survivors and a baby. Now the baby is due to come of age, the race is on to uncover their identity and obtain an interview. But the story she unvcovers is rife with gaps and impossibilities and contradictions and multiple versions of the same scenes. The case also inspired a novel and a screenplay, both of which seem to illuminate aspects most factual accounts leave out. What the hell is going on? Obliged to partner with a rival with whom she has a bad past associations, Amanda is also playing her own game with truth and deception. 

Utterly gripping, often funny, this audio book cnvets the epistolary nature of the book with ease and panache, and if the occasional verbal description of emojis seems irritating, well they're equally irritating in print, and they are a ubiquitous feature of modern communications which are either infantile or funny, and often both. 

Three groups of people trapped in three claustrophobic and desperate situations involving one or more dead bodies - a crashed bus, a stranded cable car and an isolated ski chalet, all snowbound, all cut off, all in desperate danger from without and within, all with at least one hidden killer amongst the survivors. Short chapters that jump between the three settings keep the tension and the mysteries and conundrums jacked up, along with the biggest mystery of all - how are they all connected? It all gets tied together against a background of a global pandemic decimating society and desperate, inhuman efforts to find a cure. Grim, harrowing, grisly, and compelling.

A woman goes missing during a crowded festival, apparently abandoning her young baby. One year later her body hasn't been recovered, and the appeal for information is being renewed at the opening day of the same annual festival by her daughter, partner and ex-partner. Aaron Falk is there to attend a baptism, and soon finds himself caught up in the tragedy and the heartache left behind, and tracing the outlines of her mysterious disappearance. 

A well developed story that unfolds naturally with well-developed characters and tangled familial relationships. The final revelations are chilling but satisfying and the whole thing is extremely effective.