Back when I worked as the bookkeeper at Denver's Tattered Cover Bookstore, the book buyers would receive advanced reading copies (ARCs) of soon to be published books on a regular basis, and every month they would put them in the break room for anyone to take. I would immediately head there as soon as I got the e-mail telling staff they were available, and look for my favorite authors, sometimes finding new releases by Michael Connelly, Daniel Silva, and Bill Bryson. I would also grab ARCs of authors I never heard of before, that looked like they might be interesting. One such author was Mick Herron. Without knowing it, I picked up soon to be published books by him three years in a row, not reading any of them until this past month.
Waiting for books I have on reserve at the library to become available, I picked up Nobody Walks, published in 2014, and gave it a try. It featured a former British spy trying to find out how his estranged son was killed. It held my interest, and was well written, but I was dismayed at the ending, the hero of the story tied up and being driven away to be tortured and killed (too late for a spoiler alert, I suspect). The next book, however, was Spook Street, part of a series by Herron about a group of British spies headquartered at a place called Slough House. These spies are all screw-ups, sent there to get them out of the way. They are given make-work projects to keep them busy, and led by a very eccentric character named Jackson Lamb. Naturally, they always wind up in the middle of the action, despite themselves. I really enjoyed this often very humorous book, and immediately started reading the next one in the series, London Rules, which is really entertaining, too. Happily, in the ensuing years, Herron has written three more books in this series, which I definitely intend to read. And I heartily recommend that you check out this series, too.
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