i’ve read all of the Slow Horses books and loved them, even when I saw the TV programmes on apple, and Clown Town is no different.

Taverner, First Desk, is being held to ransome by Peter Judd who used to do her job amongst other things. Now he is a politician and he has his grubby little fingers in many pies, including one of Taverner’s. He arranged the money for a ‘job’ but never told Taverner it came from China and so now she is having to do his bidding.

The Slow Horses, including River Cartwright who has been discharged due to medical difficulties, arrange to stop an assassination but end up losing one of their own and an old timer who had been misled all his working life about what his friends did. It becomes one major mess-up with Judd, who was supposed to be killed, walking out with his protection.

Lamb, who hasn’t changed, farts, smokes and drinks his way through the events but in the end pulls the trigger and lands Taverner in difficulty. He is the only one who could.

There are jokes and word-play aplenty but you do need a bit of insider knowledge to know that some of the events are taken from real life. MI5 protected someone called Stakeknife who turned out to be a murderer and brutal enforcer for the IRA. In this book we have Pitchfork who is a similar sort of character who kills by running vehicles over others’ heads.

I have talked before about the fantastic openings that Herron writes. In different ways, he conjures up the desolation and despondency there is in being a slow horse, likening them to their building and the area it is based in. Shabby, run-down, ignored and down-right unpleasant at times. This book is no different and has one of the longer sentences you are ever likely to read but once you have, you are back in Slough House.

Fantastic!