*Now a major TV series starring Gary Oldman*The new king of the spy thriller Mail on SundayMick Herron is an incredible writer Mark Billingham****From the Intelligence Service purgatory that is Slough House, where disgraced spies are sent to see out the dregs of their careers, Jackson Lamb is on his...

*Now a major TV series starring Gary Oldman*The new king of the spy thriller Mail on SundayMick Herron is an incredible writer Mark Billingham****From the Intelligence Service purgatory that is Slough House, where disgraced spies are sent to see out the dregs of their careers, Jackson Lamb is on his way to Oxford, where a former spook has turned up dead on a bus. Dickie Bow was a talented streetwalker once, good at following people and bringing home their secrets. He was in Berlin with Lamb, back in the day. But hes not an obvious target for assassination in the here and now. On Dickies phone Lamb finds the last message he ever left, which hints that an old-time Moscow-style op is being run in the Intelligence Services back-yard. Once a spook, always a spook, and even being dead doesnt mean you cant uncover secrets. Dickie Bow might have tailed his last target, but Lamb and his crew of no-hopers are about to go live. The spycraft of le Carré refracted through the blackly comic vision of Joseph Hellers Catch-22 Financial Times