Starred review from November 27, 2017
At the start of this beautifully written and ingeniously plotted standalone from Herron (Nobody Walks), 26-year-old mail room employee Maggie Barnes is trying hard not to get caught late one night in her 27-story London office building. Harvey Wells, an MI5 agent, has recruited her to upload some spyware on her company’s computer network from a flash drive. Adrift in the metropolis, Maggie has zero self-esteem and only the slimmest of personal ties to anyone, so this represents her chance to do something significant. Suffice it to say that her mission goes sideways. What at first appears to be a tale of spycraft and intrigue turns out to be something quite different—a disturbing portrait of contemporary England, with its “drip-drip-drip of sour resentment” (pre- and post-Brexit) and the palpable anomie of London. Most important is the fraught relationship between the pitiable Maggie and the manipulative Harvey, a man of great anger and bitterness. This dark thriller is rife with the deadpan wit and trenchant observation that Herron’s readers relish. Agent: Juliet Burton, Juliet Burton Literary Agency (U.K.)
January 1, 2018
Maggie Barnes is just a down-on-her luck girl in London until she is recruited by MI5 for a special at-home assignment. A complication ensues during the mission and her contact agent decides he must hide her away until it is safe for them to move. At the same time, Maggie takes it upon herself to find her missing sister. She embarks on a relationship with the one person who she suspects knows more than he is letting on. In this succinctly written stand-alone thriller not all is how it is presented; who will survive and who won't? The CWA Gold and Dagger author (Slow Horses; Dead Lions) successfully unfolds his mystery from three different perspectives, creating an atmosphere of page-turning suspense. This use of differing views means that there is not much action; instead, Herron weaves a subtle tale that touches upon various aspects of modern life while focusing exclusively on the decisions and reactions of the main characters. VERDICT Fans of twisty espionage fiction and psychological suspense won't want to put this book down until they find out what exactly happened. [See Prepub Alert, 7/24/17.]--Laura Hiatt, Fort Collins, CO
Copyright 2018 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.
December 15, 2017
The latest stand-alone from Herron couldn't be more different from his bustling, often brutally funny series about the government agents at Slough House (Spook Street, 2017, etc.). This pared-down exercise in suspense is just plain brutal."I wish this were like the films," Harvey Wells tells Maggie Barnes, the mouse he's recruited to run a delicate undercover errand for MI5. All Harvey wants Maggie to do is install an eavesdropping program in one of the computers in Quilp House, where she works in the bowels of the post office. And it's for the good of her nation and the world, since the functionaries of Quilp House, it seems, are actually working for the Chinese government. But Harvey can't offer Maggie moment-by-moment instructions or surveillance or backup; if she gets caught or anything goes wrong, she's on her own. This opening movement recalls the recruiting of the suicidal heroine of So Many Steps to Death 60 years ago, but Herron has some fantastical twists in mind that Agatha Christie never dreamed of. Something does go wrong; Maggie does get caught; and although Harvey rescues her, her life as she knows it is essentially over. To say more would spoil some of the surprises planted at regular intervals throughout the hyperextended period following Maggie's single attempt at counterespionage. Suffice it to say that Herron spins a remarkable, if often blankly incredible, tale whose dramatis personae are limited to three characters, one walk-on, and a few others dimly or harshly remembered.Given Herron's outrageous premise, the complications are managed with delicious control. Only the last act stumbles, because the climax is the only part of this story that's remotely predictable.
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Starred review from December 15, 2017
A profoundly disturbing tale from CWA Gold and Steel Daggers winner Herron about an insufficiently socialized young woman who was never warned to be careful what she wished for. Twenty-six-year-old Maggie Barnes is, sadly, one of those people you would never look at twice, the kind of person who could vanish from the face of the earth without anyone taking notice. She lives a solitary, more or less hand-to-mouth existence in a London that is singularly bleak. There is an aching absence of color and texture, except for a telltale yellow scarf. Maggie believes she has been recruited for MI5 by a man she meets at a local cafe. Is this, at last, a chance to make her life matter? Of course not, but for someone as desperate as Maggie to find a way out of the emptiness that engulfs her, there's no choice but to grab what might be a lifeline. For the reader, the gradual realization of what is actually happening to Maggie brings to mind Miranda Grey's ordeal in John Fowles' chilling The Collector (1963). Herron's tight prose is laced with black humor, without one unnecessary word. His mastery of narrative pacing shines in a dim and stifling setting where time is being deliberately held still. Any action is slowed down by the confusion and hesitancy of the characters. Fans who miss the startling and compelling psychological suspense of Ruth Rendell will relish this unsettling tale.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2017, American Library Association.)