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Title:
The List
Series: Slough House #2.5
Author:
Mick Herron
Rating: 3 of 5 Stars
Genre:
Thriller
Pages: 44
Words:
17K
Publish: 2015
This
was a nice little novella about some lazy guy in MI5 getting played.
We know the stakes aren’t big (no 9/11 circumstances like in the
previous book) but this is a good view into the “games” that go
on. Definitely not a work environment I’d ever want to be in. I’d
end up shooting people when I found out I’d been manipulated and
lied to just because my boss thought it would be fun.
There was enough separation from the character though that I didn’t get upset at what was going on. It also helps that most of the main characters in these Slough House stories ARE screwups in one way or another and I feel they deserve what they get coming to them. John Bachelor’s job was to go around and make sure these cold war era spies were being taken care of, even if they were not living the high life. And he couldn’t even be bothered to do that, which is why everything happens in this story. He’s a lazy bum and I didn’t feel bad at all about him reaping the consequences. I do have to say that the author does a fantastic job of walking that line of describing characters in such a way that I don’t want to kill them myself but I also don’t mind if they fail. That’s a real tightrope and so far, Herron has walked it without a hitch.
★★★☆☆
From the Publisher & Bookstooge
Dieter Hess, an aged spy, is dead, and John Bachelor, his MI5 handler, is in deep, deep trouble. Death has revealed that deceased had been keeping a secret second bank account—and there’s only ever one reason a spy has a secret second bank account. The question of whether he was a double agent must be resolved, and its answer may undo an entire career’s worth of spy secrets.
The List refers to a list of people that Hess had on hand. He was convincing the German spy agency that the people on this list were potential material and they were paying him to keep tabs on them. Only, every person on the list but one was in no condition to even be talking, much less spying. Bachelor tracks down the one viable candidate and convinces her to be a spy for England while pretending to be a spy for the Germans. And at the end of the novella we find out she was originally working for the Germans the entire time. So Bachelor is now paying a German spy and hired her into the English Intelligence Agency.
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