★★★★☆ | Spy & Detective | Digital | Borrow | StoryGraph | Goodreads
The sixth volume of the wonderful Slow Horses saga by Mick Herron. Jackson Lamb is as disgusting and brilliant as ever, and the Slow Horses must work together to save one of their own. Each character in these books battles their own inner demon: an addiction, the loss of a loved one, a betrayal, or a past mistake that cannot be undone. As usual, they are continually undermined by the senior leaders of the intelligence service they serve. This one is the darkest of the books so far, with an ending that hints at even more trouble ahead for the Slow Horses.
Highlights
Deep within the building’s bones is the knowledge that some of its rooms that held two characters now hold only one; that formerly familiar impressions—the weight of a shadow on a wall; the pressure of a foot on a staircase—occur no more. This is what memory is: an abiding awareness that some things have vanished. And this is what consciousness is: the knowledge that more absences will come.
That was what life was: you worked, sometimes you couldn’t sleep, and your future was already being shaped. Until something crashed into it, and knocked everything out of true.
A wilderness of mirrors, the land of spooks. Nothing you saw meant what it seemed, apart from those times when it did. Telling the two apart was the tricky bit. Knowing which was real, which the reflection.
There were so many things age could do to you; so few you could do in return. In the end, she supposed, you just stayed on your feet as long as you were able, then took the rest lying down.