Review of Mick Herron's Nobody Walks

Nobody Walks, by Mick Herron (Soho Crime, February 17, 2015)

After a long career as an ops agent for MI-5, Tom Bettany had had enough. He'd gone undercover for years to bust the McGarry crime organization, and that experience was a stain on the soul. When his wife was diagnosed with a brain tumor, he quit to be with her and their son, Liam. After Hannah died, the estrangement from Liam that had begun during his undercover years turned to a complete split.

Bettany became a bit of a drifter, leaving England for France and taking strenuous physical jobs, like his latest one in a meat packing plant. When he gets a call saying that Liam died from a fall from his apartment balcony, where he had been smoking a powerful new strain of marijuana called muskrat, Bettany comes home. Not just to go to the funeral, but to find out exactly what happened.

It doesn't take much of his old intelligence skills for Bettany to figure out that Liam's death was no accident. Now he needs to find out who is responsible and make them pay. With no official sanction and a fierce thirst for revenge, though, Bettany's methods of investigation lack a certain subtlety. In short order, he has problems with a whole raft of dangerous characters, including the muskrat distribution gang's kingpin, McGarry gang members, and the muscle for Liam's boss, who is a multi-millionaire video game creator. And when Bettany gets a call from MI-5, that's not good news, either.

I got to know Herron's writing in the last couple of years, when I read his Slow Horses and Dead Lions. The books are about a group of MI-5 agents who have been exiled from Regent's Park, where the real intelligence action is, to Slough House because of various screwups and misdeeds. These castoff agents are expected to resign at the sheer humiliation, but they're determined to hang on, distinguish themselves somehow and scrape their way back across the Thames.

The Slough House series books are terrific thrillers, stylishly written and with plenty of cynical humor. One running schtick is how the Slough House boss, the slovenly and casually offensive Jackson Lamb, is able to puncture the two top iron ladies at Regent's Park, Ingrid Tearney and Diana Tavener.

Mick Herron

You definitely don't have to read the Slough House books to enjoy Nobody Walks. It stands on its own and has a different style. There is not much humor to be had in Tom Bettany's story. This is a grim and gritty revenge thriller. You can't call Bettany likable, but he's a riveting character and the story is both action-packed and thought-provoking, with plenty of twists and turns. If this book were made into a movie––which would be a great idea––I could see Daniel Craig or Liam Neeson playing Bettany.

If you have read the Slough House books, I think you'll get a kick out of seeing the iron ladies, and you may wonder, as I do, whether Nobody Walks is the end of the Bettany story or if there will be a sequel. And if there is a sequel, might the Slough House gang come along for the ride?

Notes: I was given a free advance review copy of the book. Versions of this review may appear on Amazon, BookLikes and other reviewing sites under my usernames there.

Cozy with an Edge

I had fully expected to enjoy G. M. Malliet's first mystery, Death of a Cozy Writer, when it was released a few years ago. It had been introduced to high critical acclaim, won an Agatha for best first novel, and was shortlisted for several other prestigious awards. It had everything for a cozy lover: English manor house, guests trapped by a snowstorm, nasty rich author taunting his greedy children about changes to his will, grand denoument with all of the suspects assembled. Fond memories of Christie's And Then There Were None and The Mousetrap swirling in my head, I promptly read it–and regretted it.

It is a police procedural, but the detectives aren't introduced until the last third of the book, and then quite sketchily. If it is fair play, as the classics usually are, I couldn't spot the clues. Most of the characters are tiresome caricatures of the usual suspects from other cozies, and the style is so archly tongue-in-cheek that I had trouble finishing it. She has written a couple more in that series, neither of which I've bothered to read.

So why, when offered a review copy of Wicked Autumn: A Max Tudor Novel, the author's first book in a new series, did I take it? Maybe it was the comparison one reviewer made to St. Mary Mead, Miss Marple's home town. Or the protagonist, a sexy MI-5 spy turned village vicar (now that's a little different in a cozy). Maybe a good editor had reined in the overblown self-conscious humor? For whatever reason, I'm very glad I did!

As the first in an intended series, quite a bit of the book is devoted to a leisurely set-up so thorough that a careful reader could find her way if dropped suddenly into the center of the village, and could probably recognize many of the characters on the street. No map is included, although the author has posted a charming online interactive map of Nether Monkslip to complete its cozy credentials. The cast of characters is also listed, so we can probably expect to meet most of them in subsequent books–unless they're killed off first.

Although the lanes are still narrow and some of the buildings may lean a little, Nether Monkslip (what in the world does that mean?) has had a bit of an update since the days of the traditional cozy. Many of the businesses in town do a brisk internet trade in items from antiques to new-age crystals to handmade marzipan candies. Father Max thought he had found an idyllic place to scrub away the memories of his MI-5 service that still haunted him.

Of course every pudding has its lumps, and Nether Monkslip's is wealthy Wanda Batton-Smythe, formidable self-appointed Leader of the Community and head of the Women's Institute. As the book opens, she is busily planning the Harvest Fayre; perfectly sure of how it should be run, running roughshod over any and all other opinions. Are we unbearably surprised when she shows up dead in the midst of the Fayre? The cause of death, which at first seems obvious, turns out to involve a fairly terrible method completely new to me.

This is an enjoyable fair-play spoof on the mysteries of the Golden Age. Occasional flashes of well-placed laugh-out-loud humor have replaced the brittle archness that set my teeth on edge in the earlier book. I was a little concerned with how much of Max's past the author reveals in this first book; will he continue to be as intriguing a figure with his angst out of the bag–at least to the reader? Of course, the burning question of whether Father Max is unmarried from religious conviction or happenstance will probably continue to occupy the villagers for books to come.

I laud the author’s attempts to carry the classic cozy into the 21st century and "beef it up" a bit, and will follow her efforts with interest. For my taste, the sub-genre has become a little overpopulated in recent years with coffee, quiche, and quilts; so a young handsome vicar makes a welcome entry into the field.

Note: I received Wicked Autumn: A Max Tudor Novel as a free review copy. Also, portions of the review in this post appear in a book review posted on the book's product pages on Amazon, under my Amazon pen name.